{"id":17262,"date":"2025-01-26T13:07:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T13:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17262"},"modified":"2025-01-26T13:07:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T13:07:29","slug":"poem-if-i-could-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/01\/26\/poem-if-i-could-only\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: &#8216;If I Could Only&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>If I Could Only<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I dream of roses blooming in the sky,<br \/>\nof boys with guns, of body parts slung<br \/>\nover broken toys in some unholy rite.<br \/>\nAnd through mind-searing noise, I hear<br \/>\nthe\u00a0 wail of mothers keening for their young.<br \/>\nI dream of hell.<\/p>\n<p>But when dawn breaks,<br \/>\nI wake to find that, silently,<br \/>\na veil of snow has fallen in the night.<br \/>\nNo severed limbs,<br \/>\nno sightless, disembodied faces.<br \/>\nJust snow.<br \/>\nIts cooling calm fills all the small, slight<br \/>\nspaces where, yesterday, deep shadows<br \/>\nseized the waning light.<\/p>\n<p>No bombs. No blood.<br \/>\nHere every twig is dressed in vestal white;<br \/>\nand even while the cold-eyed, brooding<br \/>\ndawn still dawdles into day, the sky is bright<br \/>\nwith snow, caught by its primal purity &#8211;<br \/>\nthe indrawn hush.<br \/>\nThis lustrous, arcane alchemy:<br \/>\nthe mint-ness of a clean-wiped slate.<br \/>\nIt seems a consecration, soft as<br \/>\nthe laying on of hands. It bears the grace<br \/>\nof prayer &#8211; an urgent dream for respite<br \/>\neverywhere.<\/p>\n<p>If I could only catch it up, reach out<br \/>\nand gather in this white of new-washed<br \/>\nsheets, flung over fields and trees;<br \/>\ngarner it in, then loose it on the scorching,<br \/>\nhope-burned world. Stifle the fires and guns,<br \/>\nthe screaming drones. Re-write the<br \/>\ncountless stolen, rubbled lives.<\/p>\n<p>If I could only soothe this quenching<br \/>\nsilence over all the weeping and the<br \/>\nwounds; make real this gift of new<br \/>\nbeginning. Of absolution.<br \/>\nThis unflawed state of grace.<br \/>\nIf I could only.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Feature Image: Francesco Goya, <i>Y son fieras<\/i> (<i>And they are fierce<\/i> or <i>And they fight like wild beasts<\/i>), c. 1810.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I Could Only I dream of roses blooming in the sky, of boys with guns, of body parts slung over broken toys in some unholy rite. And through mind-searing noise, I hear the\u00a0 wail of mothers keening for their young. I dream of hell. But when dawn breaks, I wake to find that, silently, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[100,1448,1449,1959,5647,5648,5649,5650,5651,6843,7320,7341],"class_list":["post-17262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-if","tag-cassandra-voices-poem","tag-cassandra-voices-poetry","tag-could","tag-lorely-forrester","tag-lorely-forrester-if-i-could-only","tag-lorely-forrester-cassandra-voices","tag-lorely-forrester-poem","tag-lorely-forrester-poet","tag-only","tag-poem","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}