{"id":36414,"date":"2016-11-05T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=36414"},"modified":"2016-11-01T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T21:49:07","slug":"praying-for-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/praying-for-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Praying for Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

by James Tighe<\/p>\n

In the throes of a summer-into-fall drought
\na pure blue October Mississippi sky shimmers on high
\nlike an air-brushed false god
\nTo the east Hurricane Matthew rolls north along Florida\u2019s Atlantic coast
\nDylan\u2019s Love & Theft voice rasps through my open window
\nDying grass underfoot is brittle as fallen autumn leaves
\nStaring at the sterile, cloudless sky while Dylan sings:
\nOnly one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long
\nwhich happens to be a line he plagiarized from my own unwritten theme song
\nSometimes I wonder about the public figure Bob Dylan
\nand his long career as a composer and singer of songs
\nIs it just a job?
\nDoes he rely on rhyme too much?
\nDoes he ever get tired of being the coolest cat in the room?
\nIs he a prisoner of his art? As everyone is hostage to rainfall?
\nSoy bean growers like a dry harvest season
\nSweet potato farmers don\u2019t
\nNorth American Indians chant and dance
\nrecalcitrant rainclouds into existence
\nInuit peoples on winter Arctic nights
\nhold hands outside in a big circle and \u201cwhistle down\u201d the Northern Lights\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by James Tighe In the throes of a summer-into-fall drought a pure blue October Mississippi sky shimmers on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":36416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[300],"tags":[83,4782,3,753,7563],"class_list":["post-36414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-localart","tag-james-tighe","tag-poetry","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2016-11-1-pray-for-rain.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}