{"id":4164,"date":"2020-07-14T17:03:09","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T00:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/?p=4164"},"modified":"2020-08-03T17:27:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T00:27:57","slug":"raking-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/2020\/07\/14\/raking-leaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Raking Leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Raking leaves<\/p>\n<p>is an exercise in the good-enough.<\/p>\n<p>You will never get them all.<\/p>\n<p>You come to prize<\/p>\n<p>the strong, steady stroke of the rake,<\/p>\n<p>the appropriate armful that you lift<\/p>\n<p>into the waiting wheelbarrow.<\/p>\n<p>The maple leaves which from a distance<\/p>\n<p>appear two-tone, red and silver,<\/p>\n<p>reveal a soul-satisfying palette<\/p>\n<p>from crimson to lavender.<\/p>\n<p>A leaf falls in your hair and tickles your neck.<\/p>\n<p>You cover the lily beds<\/p>\n<p>with their winter blanket,<\/p>\n<p>a gorgeous quilt<\/p>\n<p>in five-pointed patchwork.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re no good at quilting, but it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n<p>Raking leaves is an object lesson<\/p>\n<p>in Lamott\u2019s \u201cshitty first drafts.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>From Guest Contributor <a href=\"http:\/\/caesarc.msu.domains\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Cheryl Caesar<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University.  Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raking leaves is an exercise in the good-enough. You will never get them all. You come to prize the strong, steady stroke of the rake, the appropriate armful that you lift into the waiting wheelbarrow. The maple leaves which from a distance appear two-tone, red and silver, reveal a soul-satisfying palette from crimson to lavender. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9228,9231,9227,2274,6206,3192,9236,41,1291,9235,6542,2658,9230,2420,4053,9233,5573,9234,3167,1004,1527,9229,9232],"class_list":["post-4164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100words","tag-armful","tag-beds","tag-cheryl-caesar","tag-curse","tag-distance","tag-exercise","tag-first-draft","tag-guest-contributor","tag-hair","tag-lamott","tag-leaf","tag-leaves","tag-maple-leaves","tag-neck","tag-palette","tag-patchwork","tag-quilt","tag-quilting","tag-rake","tag-soul","tag-stroke","tag-wheelbarrow","tag-winter-blanket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}