{"id":1014,"date":"2023-08-01T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/?p=1014"},"modified":"2023-07-30T12:30:56","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T19:30:56","slug":"prairie-song-by-laura-balster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/2023\/08\/01\/prairie-song-by-laura-balster\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Prairie Song&#8221; by Laura Balster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><br>At first glance<br>the prairie is boring.<br>Face it,<br>it&#8217;s flat.<br>No oceans, no mountains<br>just grass<br>everywhere you look.<br>It&#8217;s so boring you eventually<br>look up.<br>And then you see<br>the sky is alive,<br>it pulses with clouds.<br>One minute it is a plausible<br>picnic day;<br>checkered blanket,<br>a game of badminton, perhaps<br>some lemon tea.<br>Then the scent of the wind<br>changes, the crows start to caw.<br>Looks of alarm, hurried<br>folded blankets,<br>nowhere to run<br>except the car.<br>You duck under the dashboard<br>and wait.<br>A vaccuum silence,<br>a thunder clap,<br>the roar of rain on the roof.<br>A sigh, a pause, a pitter pat,<br>and the sun shines again<br>on the prairie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:14px\"><br><em>Laura Balster has loved poetry since childhood, and has been writing it since a teenager.  She studied Literature at Wilmington College in Ohio and has since lived in Colorado, California, and New York City. She settled down and started a family in Oklahoma and has lived there for 37 years. She fell in love with the prairie and its people; these poems celebrate that.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At first glancethe prairie is boring.Face it,it&#8217;s flat.No oceans, no mountainsjust grasseverywhere you look.It&#8217;s so boring you eventuallylook up.And then you seethe sky is alive,it pulses with clouds.One minute it is a plausiblepicnic day;checkered blanket,a game of badminton, perhapssome lemon tea.Then the scent of the windchanges, the crows start to caw.Looks of alarm, hurriedfolded blankets,nowhere &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/2023\/08\/01\/prairie-song-by-laura-balster\/\" class=\"excerpt-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/dave-IRHNxX5y_hg-unsplash.jpg?fit=640%2C457&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}