{"id":133607,"date":"2023-09-02T16:37:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T20:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=133607"},"modified":"2023-09-02T16:37:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T20:37:03","slug":"a-lesson-on-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/a-lesson-on-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lesson on Growing"},"content":{"rendered":"

(or, The Menagerie pt. 2<\/em>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My early memories are few and far between<\/p>\n

but I remember being tiny and excited<\/p>\n

to gawk snakes and bugs and other critters<\/p>\n

some lady brought to my pre-K class<\/p>\n

to teach us about animals.<\/p>\n

I think there was a fennec fox,<\/p>\n

but mostly I was fascinated by the spindly-legged tarantulas,<\/p>\n

and the giant yellow-and-white python that voided itself on my mom’s favorite shirt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My dad spent my fourteenth summer<\/p>\n

tidying the stoop of our front porch.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t so bad but for a couple of spiders,<\/p>\n

big-bellied and proliferate,<\/p>\n

becoming a nuisance in need of eviction.<\/p>\n

I watched Dad, fearless of the world as he so seemed,<\/p>\n

and must have said something to offset him.<\/p>\n

He plucked the nearest spider from its nest and tossed it at my face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eight years I was a Spider Slayer of the Most Fearful Order.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For my second half of college I moved to small-town Oregon<\/p>\n

where the weather was wild and the creatures wilder.<\/p>\n

I was reminded how to fall in love with the little things<\/p>\n

with their unknowable thoughts and simple purposes,<\/p>\n

and I, Spider Slayer, after for so long having frozen stiff against the eight-legged<\/p>\n

finally melted to understand them as victims of a father’s poor choice, just like me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today I am Mother of Jumpers.<\/p>\n

Clover and Sorrel admire each other from their separate homes,<\/p>\n

friendly if not somewhat grumpy when bothered like the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Ghost is a more difficult little guy, having disappeared<\/p>\n

into the window for three days before reemerging like a certain well-worshipped-someone,<\/p>\n

dusty, confused, and clutching to my finger like a newborn babe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I collect their little molted hats in a cup as I watch them grow, careful not to let them disappear at a careless breath.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Hour 8)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(or, The Menagerie pt. 2)   My early memories are few and far between but I remember being tiny and excited to gawk snakes and bugs and other critters some lady brought to my pre-K class to teach us about animals. I think there was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133627,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133607\/revisions\/133627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}