{"id":18820,"date":"2019-04-01T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=18820"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:43:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:43:13","slug":"matthew-friday-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/matthew-friday-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>3 Swans Arrive in Prague<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>They arrive clothed in April keenness, three<br \/>\nValkyries, a cloudy V made for smaller birds.<br \/>\nThey fly across the face of the National Theatre:<br \/>\ngolden spikes, a winged charioteer and reeling<\/p>\n<p>horses, frozen in jealous bronze. Bobbing heavy<br \/>\non the possibility they\u2019re too big to be airborne.<br \/>\nThe three Snow White travelers line up<br \/>\nover the Vltava river, but exhausted currents<\/p>\n<p>tug them, a drunken line, between sights<br \/>\nof the Castle, the Old Town, centuries of migration,<br \/>\nunchanging instinct. They lower and pass over<br \/>\nCharles Bridge, ignoring lucky statues, bands,<\/p>\n<p>artists, beggars, hawkers, two dogs arguing.<br \/>\nWings folding down, an impossibly controlled<br \/>\ncurve that looks like crash landing in trees.<br \/>\nInstead a perfect landing on the river, home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Matthew Friday<\/strong> is a writer, professional storyteller and primary school teacher. By all means check out the results at: <a href=\"https:\/\/matthewfriday.weebly.com\/poetry\">matthewfriday.weebly.com\/poetry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 3 Swans Arrive in Prague They arrive clothed in April keenness, three Valkyries, a cloudy V made for smaller birds. They fly across the face of the National Theatre: golden spikes, a winged charioteer and reeling horses, frozen in jealous bronze. Bobbing heavy on the possibility they\u2019re too big to be airborne. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18820"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18870,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18820\/revisions\/18870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}