{"id":253,"date":"2006-08-17T10:59:59","date_gmt":"2006-08-17T14:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2006\/08\/17\/ratty-old-spruce\/"},"modified":"2006-08-17T10:59:59","modified_gmt":"2006-08-17T14:59:59","slug":"ratty-old-spruce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2006\/08\/17\/ratty-old-spruce\/","title":{"rendered":"Ratty old spruce"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As you arrive at the foot of our cottage steps<br \/>\n(Hopefully bearing an awesome arrray of goodies)<br \/>\nYour way is arrested at least temporarily<br \/>\nBy a ratty old spruce that stands crowding the stairs<br \/>\nLike an indigent old panhandler hustling for change.<br \/>\nYou can&#8217;t get by without wrestling with it.<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t try to avert your eyes: it&#8217;s in your face;<br \/>\nIt won&#8217;t go away. It was planted there for us<br \/>\nBy a Mohawk neighbour who thought a pair<br \/>\nOf trees flanking the front door would give<br \/>\nThe place some class. Fortunately, one died.<br \/>\nWhen it was a young indigent panhandler,<br \/>\nI couldn&#8217;t rip it out or call the cops because<br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t want to hurt his feelings. Now he<br \/>\nNever comes by, spends his time sitting in<br \/>\nA nursing home, spinning exciting yarns for the<br \/>\nUnexcitable. I wish I could tear it out,<br \/>\nCut it down, call the cops, but I can&#8217;t.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s <em>our<\/em> ratty old spruce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you arrive at the foot of our cottage steps (Hopefully bearing an awesome arrray of goodies) Your way is arrested at least temporarily By a ratty old spruce that stands crowding the stairs Like an indigent old panhandler hustling &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2006\/08\/17\/ratty-old-spruce\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}