{"id":2080,"date":"2008-02-29T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2080"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:28:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:28:35","slug":"poetry-friday-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2080","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Whew. Friday at last, and a not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n

Happy Leap Year, everyone! The end of February is also here, and we’ll all share in the relief (just as soon as the forty-five mph winds stop gusting and the lights quit blinking off and on) that Spring is definite, indisputably, can’t-hold-it-back on its way. No matter what that groundhog said: it’s almost over.<\/p>\n

Don’t forget to read down to ‘Toon Thursday<\/a>; it’s still so great to be made into a cartoon; I’m so much thinner<\/i> on paper…!<\/p>\n

When I’m not obsessing over the whole thinness issue, I’m obsessing over my things. This poem struck me as a the beginning of an explanation for why we cherish stuff so much. It’s ours… we’ve named it. It’s our baby…<\/p>\n

Things<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.<\/p>\n

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,<\/p>\n

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.<\/p>\n

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.
“Things” by Liesel Mueller<\/a>, from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems<\/u>. \u00a9 Louisiana State University.<\/p>\n

The poetry of possessions and other ‘stuff’ can be found today at Writing & Ruminating<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whew. Friday at last, and a not a moment too soon. Happy Leap Year, everyone! The end of February is also here, and we’ll…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,10],"class_list":["post-2080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry-friday","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4757,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions\/4757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}