{"id":40,"date":"2009-04-11T21:03:53","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T04:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=40"},"modified":"2009-05-08T15:18:27","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T22:18:27","slug":"white-clouds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"White Clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Barbara Sweeney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The good thing about clouds is that<br \/>\nyou always know where to look.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You are eating lunch outside with your brother<br \/>\nand you are both little enough<br \/>\nto have your own small table and chairs.<br \/>\nFeet touch the ground.<br \/>\nSun-milk slants at you from inside the glass.<br \/>\nYou are both quietly eating sandwiches on white bread.<br \/>\nYou look down at the hair on your arms<br \/>\nrising with small bumps, \u201cIt\u2019s too cold<br \/>\nto eat outside.\u201d\u00a0 You look out<br \/>\nat the overgrown yard<br \/>\nthat clear green color<br \/>\nyou will see later in dreams.<br \/>\nYou look up to the sky.<br \/>\nWhite clouds.<\/p>\n<p>White clouds are made<br \/>\nfrom the stories and secrets of other<br \/>\nwet neighborhoods.<br \/>\nThey never really looked like palaces,<br \/>\nor anything else but clouds<br \/>\nand the same ones who bored you<br \/>\nwith that face on the moon,<br \/>\nthe same ones who settled for<br \/>\nlesser gods in the<br \/>\nnight sky \u2013have herded up<br \/>\nand coded these clouds by<br \/>\ncolor and density,<br \/>\ngiven them names with no power<br \/>\nand small captions about storms.<\/p>\n<p>You thought none of these things<br \/>\nuntil much later.\u00a0 It\u2019s too cold<br \/>\nto eat outside, and you\u2019ve discovered<br \/>\nyour own secret breath on the window<br \/>\nin the shape of a ruined cloud<br \/>\nwalking beside a king.<\/p>\n<p><em>Appeared in The Washout Review;<br \/>\nVol. 1\/No.4, Summer, 1976<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Barbara Sweeney The good thing about clouds is that you always know where to look. You are eating lunch outside with your brother and you are both little enough to have your own small table and chairs. Feet touch the ground. Sun-milk slants at you from inside the glass. You are both quietly eating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-white_clouds","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"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=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}