{"id":87,"date":"2018-11-16T18:36:33","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T18:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/?p=87"},"modified":"2018-11-16T18:36:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T18:36:33","slug":"man-on-a-bench","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/man-on-a-bench\/","title":{"rendered":"MAN ON A BENCH"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MAN ON A BENCH<\/strong><br \/>\nSpring, warm nights,<br \/>\nmoths under street lights.<br \/>\nHis sleeping bag a mattress,<br \/>\nhe stretched out like a praying mantis:<br \/>\narms bent, face in a frozen grimace.<\/p>\n<p>He sleeps while the early morning<br \/>\ntraffic passes, his gray hair<br \/>\npeeks over the bench arm.<br \/>\nIn the afternoon, he crosses the street,<br \/>\nclasping his belongings. <\/p>\n<p>Where does he go<br \/>\nwhen summer&#8217;s thunder<br \/>\nand lightening own the sky?<\/p>\n<p>Autumn, leaves of the Bradford pear<br \/>\nbrown and settle onto the bench.<br \/>\nHe spends nights in his sleeping bag.<br \/>\nHe coughs, his breath<br \/>\ndrifts in the morning sun.<\/p>\n<p>Did he sleep in cardboard<br \/>\nunder iced-covered pine trees<br \/>\nin the highway&#8217;s median<br \/>\nor crouches over a steam vent,<br \/>\nhis tent capturing the heat.<\/p>\n<p>Maple trees bud,<br \/>\nthe volunteers plant<br \/>\nearly pansies. Today, the man<br \/>\nreclaims his bench.<\/p>\n<p>The Hudson View<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MAN ON A BENCH Spring, warm nights, moths under street lights. His sleeping bag a mattress, he stretched out like a praying mantis: arms bent, face in a frozen grimace. He sleeps while the early morning traffic passes, his gray hair peeks over the bench arm. In the afternoon, he crosses the street, clasping his&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/man-on-a-bench\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">MAN ON A BENCH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-published-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}