{"id":3404,"date":"2021-07-08T09:33:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T13:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=3404"},"modified":"2021-07-08T09:33:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T13:33:43","slug":"a-poem-for-a-thursday-137","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/08\/a-poem-for-a-thursday-137\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #137"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by L J Ribar<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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I haven’t featured a Billy Collins poem in a while. I don’t think I have read one I haven’t liked. I love the way his poems are so conversational. They sound as if a friend is talking to you about something you have always thought but haven’t known how to put into words. The reader can easily imagine he is sitting on your front porch chatting to you in a leisurely manner over a frosted glass of lemonade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna\nor on any river for that matter\nto be perfectly honest.\n\nNot in July or any month\nhave I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--\nof fishing on the Susquehanna.\n\nI am more likely to be found\nin a quiet room like this one--\na painting of a woman on the wall,\n\na bowl of tangerines on the table--\ntrying to manufacture the sensation \nof fishing on the Susquehanna.\n\nThere is little doubt\nthat others have been fishing\non the Susquehanna,\n\nrowing upstream in a wooden boat,\nsliding the oars under the water\nthen raising them to drip in the light.\n\nBut the nearest I have ever come to \nfishing on the Susquehanna\nwas one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia\n\nwhen I balanced a little egg of time\nin front of a painting\nin which that river curled around a bend\n\nunder a blue cloud-ruffled sky,\ndense trees along the banks,\nand  a fellow with a red bandanna\n\nsitting in a small, green\nflat-bottomed boat\nholding the thin whip of a pole.\n\nThen I blinked and move on\nto other American scenes\nof haystacks, water whitening over rocks,\n\n even one of a brown hare\nwho seemed so wired with alertness\nI imagined him springing right out of the frame.\n\nFishing on the Susquehanna in July\nBilly Collins<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven’t featured a Billy Collins poem in a while. I don’t think I have read one I haven’t liked. I love the way his poems are so conversational. They sound as if a friend is talking to you about something you have always thought but haven’t known how to put into words. The reader can easily imagine he is sitting on your front porch chatting to you in a leisurely manner over a frosted glass of lemonade. I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure–if it is a pleasure– of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one– a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table– trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandanna sitting in a small, green flat-bottomed boat holding the thin whip of a pole. Then I blinked and move on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks, even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. Fishing on the Susquehanna in July Billy Collins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3406,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3404\/revisions\/3406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}