{"id":4291,"date":"2018-08-21T07:53:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T14:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=4291"},"modified":"2020-06-22T04:00:12","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T11:00:12","slug":"artifacts-upon-artifacts-poem-march-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/poetry\/artifacts-upon-artifacts-poem-march-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Artifacts Upon Artifacts&#8211;A Poem (March 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">I mowed the lawn today, <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">a March afternoon,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">the Oregon Coast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">A few spring beads still clung to the blades.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Grass never seems dry here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">It\u2019s all pointless, this mowing of lawns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">But we do it anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Can\u2019t let the lawn become a field.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Can\u2019t go with what we really want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The noise and smoke scattered the robins,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">and then I saw it\u2014her white barrette\u2014near the bleached dog bone,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">leaning against the foundation,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">tinted with mold.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">I stopped, idled the mower, picked it up, inspected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">An artifact now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">I put it back where I\u2019d put it before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">It was a summer night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Fire in the burn barrel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Fog thick. Fog sprinting past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Ocean rolling forever behind us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Good honest whiskey talk.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">But there is no such thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Even from me to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Somehow the barrette fell from your blonde hair,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">perhaps my hand the culprit,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">and hid itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Until two weeks later,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">after you left me for the drunk in your band,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">when I nearly mowed over it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">I wanted to. I had the power\u2014this time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">One must not destroy artifacts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Artifacts upon artifacts reveal a story,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">if an archaeologist wants to dig.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The historian can make sense of it later.<\/span><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-4291\" data-postid=\"4291\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-4291 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mowed the lawn today, a March afternoon, the Oregon Coast. A few spring beads still clung to the blades. Grass never seems dry here. It\u2019s all pointless, this mowing of lawns. But we do it anyway. Can\u2019t let the lawn become a field. Can\u2019t go with what we really want. The noise and smoke [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,42],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-4291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nsp-correspondents","category-poetry","tag-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4294,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291\/revisions\/4294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}