{"id":289,"date":"2015-11-05T10:49:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T18:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/?p=289"},"modified":"2015-11-05T10:56:53","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T18:56:53","slug":"cedar-osprey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/cedar-osprey\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedar Osprey"},"content":{"rendered":"<table width=\"700&quot;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\" width=\"700\">Forget this mask, it can wait it out<br \/>\nIn a cedar box, wrapped in furs,<br \/>\nit only gathers strength unseen.<\/p>\n<p>Buried, it might sprout<br \/>\nMight send up concentric rings of shoots like a circle of whips<br \/>\nlost in the forest that will come to be<br \/>\nOr it can wait for generations just hanging on a wall<br \/>\nDisguised as art, as relic, as curio,<br \/>\nas bric and brac or time out of mind<br \/>\nHanging and waiting,<br \/>\nLike a hawk hanging on the still air, waiting, watching<br \/>\nAt no time anticipating the plunge to earth, talons spread<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s the way it waits<br \/>\nA shaft of cedar, a hank of hair, a feather, a bone, a length of cord<br \/>\nBecause a time will come<\/p>\n<p>And in that time a very young member of the family,<br \/>\ntoo young to know a disquise from a miracle,<br \/>\nwill open the box<br \/>\nAnd unwrap the furs like Christmas morning<br \/>\nHe will dig in the forest of shoots with his toy shovel,<br \/>\nKnock off the clods, wipe off the dust and mold,<br \/>\nBlow away the decay with soft, tentative breaths<br \/>\nOr just climb up on the mantlepiece<br \/>\nFinally old enough and big enough<br \/>\nTo reach what&#8217;s taunted him for years&#8211;the cord<br \/>\nAnd when he pulls on the cord,<br \/>\nthe great beak drops open at last<br \/>\nThe old wooden skull splits in half, showing the clever way the cords attach inside.<br \/>\nAnd there is no time to worry about disguise, or even art<br \/>\nOr even birds<br \/>\nBecause inside the wood is slick and hard with red paint<br \/>\nInside is the graven face of God, scowling with ineffable love.<\/p>\n<p>The thrust-out tongue of God supports the broken back of an enchanted child,<br \/>\nlike a fetus, but with eyes wide open<br \/>\nThe child lies touched by the teeth, between two red arms<br \/>\nthat reach out from the face of God along the inside of the halves of the skull<br \/>\nTwo red arms holding small human bones<br \/>\nThe mouth of God holding polished human teeth<br \/>\nBut nothing human in its eyes<br \/>\nAnd nothing human in the glimpse, beyond the teeth and tongue<br \/>\nOf a throat.<\/p>\n<p>And the child finally knows what perhaps he suspected all along<br \/>\nBut now knows for certain<br \/>\nProbably he flees<br \/>\nFrom the room, the box, the living grave<br \/>\nInto the dark<br \/>\nInto his adulthood<br \/>\nInto disguise.<\/p>\n<p>Later an adult will come and see the mask open, the cord swinging back and forth as if to tease a cat<br \/>\nHe will smile, and gently close the beak, turning the mask back into a bird of prey<br \/>\nBack into a piece of art<br \/>\nHe will look around, still smiling, for the child<br \/>\nHe will touch the cord, roll it in his fingers<br \/>\nSmiling<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"><a href=\"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/writing\/\">Back To Writing Samples Index<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forget this mask, it can wait it out In a cedar box, wrapped in furs, it only gathers strength unseen. Buried, it might sprout Might send up concentric rings of shoots like a circle of whips lost in the forest that will come to be Or it can wait for generations just hanging on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/linrobinson.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}