{"id":2242,"date":"2007-11-09T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2242"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:27:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:27:52","slug":"poetry-friday-story-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2242","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: The Story We Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>The Story We Know<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The way to begin is always the same. Hello,<br \/>Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, just fine,<br \/>and Good bye at the end. That&#8217;s every story we know,<\/p>\n<p>and why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No?<br \/>Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine?<br \/>The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello,<\/p>\n<p>and then it&#8217;s Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow<br \/>day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine<br \/>and Good bye. In the end, this is a story we know<\/p>\n<p>so well we don&#8217;t turn the page, or look below<br \/>the picture, or follow the words to the next line:<br \/>The way to begin is always the same Hello.<\/p>\n<p>But one night, through the latticed window, snow<br \/>begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine.<br \/>Good bye is the end of every story we know<\/p>\n<p>that night, and when we close the curtains, oh,<br \/>we hold each other against that cold white sign<br \/>of the way we all begin and end. Hello,<br \/>Good bye is the only story. We know, we know.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marthacollinspoet.com\/\" target= _blank>Martha Collins<\/a>, from <i>The Catastrophe of Rainbows<\/i> (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1985; reissued 1998)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_nIccA6r7lXY\/RzR0ePTCq_I\/AAAAAAAAAXE\/UAfKBI-KGHw\/s1600-h\/autumn+reflection.jpg\" target=_blank title=\"reflections on autumn\"><br \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=10 align= right src=\"https:\/\/writingya.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/autumn-reflection.jpg\" \/><\/a>This is another poem I copied down in high school journal, next to the last stanza of Robert Frost&#8217;s <i>Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening<\/i>. More melancholy verses &#8212; today to be shared with the cyberworld and beyond &#8212; at <a href=\"http:\/\/awrungsponge.blogspot.com\/2007\/11\/heres-little-poem.html\" target= _blank>a wrung sponge<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Story We Know The way to begin is always the same. Hello,Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, just fine,and Good bye at&#8230;<\/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-2242","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\/2242","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=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4505,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions\/4505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}