{"id":875,"date":"2025-08-05T19:35:38","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T19:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:12:39","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:12:39","slug":"sparrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=875","title":{"rendered":"Sparrow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow.\u201d <\/p>\n\u2013 William Shakespeare, Hamlet <\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I found a remnant of your life
when I arrived. 

Caught on the glass,
it fluttered as I slowed until,
stopped in the windless room,
(like you) it grew still.

I had drifted\u2014
the sun was behind me, pulling its 
golden blanket across 
the late-summer landscape,

the war-room warble was still
battering in my head\u2014
I'd left it there in search
of other dwellings. 

Floating, it seemed I was 
not actor but observer:

you among the host 
lifting from the grass and cutting
across my path

(a second and a half
was too late to
slip back into my skin).

In the mirror I saw your body
drop like a 
sack of beads.

It was only a moment,
one moment before that you

enjoyed the warmth of sun on your back,
the swell of a crumb in your belly,
the chitter of friends,
the prospect of tomorrow.

I raged for this,
I wept.

My body
wrapped in marbled green
and their voices again,
like a warring wind:
why are you in the military?<\/em> 

This time from the girl 
who weeps for sparrows:
why are you in the military?<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
August 13, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere\u2019s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.\u201d \u2013 William Shakespeare, Hamlet I found a remnant of your lifewhen I arrived. Caught on the glass,it fluttered as I slowed until,stopped in the windless room,(like you) it grew still.I had drifted\u2014the sun was behind me, pulling its golden blanket across the late-summer landscape,the war-room…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[988,942,102,990,989,772,941],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","tag-existential-crisis","tag-fall-of-a-sparrow","tag-hamlet","tag-imposter-syndrome","tag-life-questions","tag-military","tag-the-fall-of-sparrows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}