{"id":67637,"date":"2020-06-27T16:12:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T20:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=67637"},"modified":"2020-06-27T16:12:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T20:12:24","slug":"the-urchins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/the-urchins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Urchins"},"content":{"rendered":"

They knew their stuff and clutched the soft spots<\/p>\n

of the ocean floor for that was their job, and they were blind.<\/p>\n

But in the weirdest sense, they did see:\u00a0 the solitary sea floor<\/p>\n

and the larger fish-stealing food through murky fog-water, swimming faster,<\/p>\n

pushing with mouths wide open.\u00a0 The shark-like fish<\/p>\n

swallowed hard, desultory, robot-like.<\/p>\n

Far away from the seashore, the urchins saw much more:<\/p>\n

a small teakwood sewing machine with ornate legs,<\/p>\n

Dutch-made, lying on a Harlem Street<\/p>\n

as November-slanted rain fast-warped the soft wood<\/p>\n

and rusted the bobbins and motor.<\/p>\n

The urchins closed their eyes.<\/p>\n

It didn’t matter that Frank, a homeless man, was slinking<\/p>\n

along again in a valley of tears, desolate and drunk.<\/p>\n

Looking into a puddle by the sewer,<\/p>\n

he saw his sad reflection, wiped his hand ad stuck it into his pocket.<\/p>\n

The urchins felt his presence though they were invisible to him.<\/p>\n

There, the locket rubbed against his thumb.<\/p>\n

So he took it out, cried as he saw the face of an angel<\/p>\n

looking back at him.\u00a0 “It’ll be okay,” it seemed to whisper,<\/p>\n

as he closed the clasp and let out sobs from the back<\/p>\n

of his throat, in a man way, until he was able to choke them down.<\/p>\n

He looked again at the puddle and saw a trapped pigeon stuck<\/p>\n

in the sewer slots.\u00a0 With a quick maneuver, he pulled its broken wing<\/p>\n

out of the grate and it hobbled away.<\/p>\n

And now the urchins could rest and bless Frank.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They knew their stuff and clutched the soft spots of the ocean floor for that was their job, and they were blind. But in the weirdest sense, they did see:\u00a0 the solitary sea floor and the larger fish-stealing food through murky fog-water, swimming faster, pushing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67637","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\/1362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67790,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67637\/revisions\/67790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}