{"id":151,"date":"2015-11-17T03:41:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T03:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/?p=151"},"modified":"2015-11-17T03:41:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T03:41:03","slug":"iwn-anthology-poem-her-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/iwn-anthology-poem-her-room\/","title":{"rendered":"IWN Anthology Poem: ‘Her Room’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fred<\/a>This excerpt from the latest IWN anthology, Time and Tide<\/em><\/a>, is the poem, “Her Room,” by Fred Bassett. But first we share this background from the author on the poem’s inspiration:<\/p>\n

After we moved to Hilton Head Island in August of 1988, it dawned on me as my birthday approached that I should visit my mother, who now lived by herself only three hours away, and celebrate her life for giving me life. So I called her to tell her I was coming, by myself, on my birthday to take her to lunch, just the two of us…<\/p>\n

Her Room<\/h3>\n

She sits alone in the big chair,
\nadmiring the cut flowers by the window.
\nIt was her first-born son\u2019s birthday,
\nand he had driven three hours
\nto celebrate with gifts for her.
\nThe mother should be the focus
\nof one\u2019s birthday, he would tell her.
\nShe picks up the new teddy bear,
\nthe first she could call her own,
\nand holds it like it was a baby.<\/p>\n

Drifting across the years, she recalls
\nthe morning her water broke.
\nHow young and innocent she was.
\nHow hope had withered to despair
\nduring the long, difficult labor
\nin that old farm house back in Alabama.
\nA travail she had never spoken about,
\nalthough her sister had blabbed it to him.
\nBut she could not contain within herself
\nthe anguish of her darkest day.
\nHow she woke that morning to find
\nher beloved husband dead in their bed.
\nYet her world kept turning,
\nshadowed with both joy and sorrow.<\/p>\n

The old family clock strikes five.
\nShe had expected him to call by now.
\nSurely he was safely home with his family.
\nShe turns to the opposite wall
\nwhere the late sun, in fair weather,
\nalways works some shifting spell.
\nAnd there are the shadows of her flowers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This excerpt from the latest IWN anthology, Time and Tide, is the poem, “Her Room,” by Fred Bassett. But first we share this background from the author on the poem’s inspiration: After we moved to Hilton Head Island in August of 1988, it dawned on me as my birthday approached that I should visit my […]<\/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":[8],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iwn-books-and-anthologies","tag-island-writers-network"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}