{"id":18,"date":"2009-04-11T20:55:05","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=18"},"modified":"2009-04-11T20:55:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:55:05","slug":"edgertons-lambs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Edgerton&#8217;s Lambs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Barbara Sweeney<\/strong><br \/>\nEvery year he brought them down<br \/>\nto the village square<br \/>\nof our slippered Republican town:<br \/>\nreal lambs for a flesh and blood nativity.<br \/>\nIn the lifesize stable, a real Mary<br \/>\nwas paired with a real Joseph,<br \/>\nwho stood shivering<br \/>\nin his burlap robe.<br \/>\nRequisite angels brought forth<br \/>\ntheir music in the cold Connecticut night,<br \/>\nand Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar<br \/>\nknelt like snow dome statues<br \/>\nnext to a couple of borrowed cows<br \/>\nand Edgerton\u2019s lambs.<\/p>\n<p>It was the beginning of religion for me.<br \/>\nThe dumb animals, steam<br \/>\npuffing from their nostrils,<br \/>\nstanding bunched and puzzled on a pile of straw.<br \/>\nAnd Edgerton,<br \/>\nour affable, bow-tied neighbor,<br \/>\ntweaking his wire-rim glasses,<br \/>\ntugging his grey twill pants up high<br \/>\nabove his real waist.<br \/>\nStable, steam, straw, star.<br \/>\nWhat was real gave shape<br \/>\nto what we wished for.<br \/>\nA perfect baby, a saving god,<br \/>\nreal kings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Barbara Sweeney Every year he brought them down to the village square of our slippered Republican town: real lambs for a flesh and blood nativity. In the lifesize stable, a real Mary was paired with a real Joseph, who stood shivering in his burlap robe. Requisite angels brought forth their music in the cold [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edgertons_lambs","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}