{"id":2387,"date":"2014-09-15T04:04:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T09:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=2387"},"modified":"2014-09-15T04:04:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T09:04:21","slug":"the-road-is-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2014\/09\/15\/the-road-is-low\/","title":{"rendered":"The road is low"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, the boys and I took Nana on an adventure. It started out as a trip to a statue in a park, but ended up with us exploring the roads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At one point, we found ourselves driving on a road through a swamp. The road was narrow and low, and the brown swamp water reached right up to its edge. “Wow,” I said. “The water’s really high.”<\/p>\n

“Or the road is really low,” my youngest son said.<\/p>\n

“That sounds like the start of a book,” I said. “The road is low, the water is high.”<\/p>\n

“Not a book,” he said. “A poem. Let’s do it!”<\/p>\n

“Okay. I’ll start: The road is low, the water is high.”<\/p>\n

“The moon is shining bright in the sky,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The black and white cranes look like they’re going to cry,” his older brother added.<\/p>\n

There was a moment of quiet, then I glanced at Nana. “Your turn.”<\/p>\n

“My<\/em> turn?”<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” the boys said. “You’re next.”<\/p>\n

I recited the poem so far for her.<\/p>\n

“We watch them go, with a happy sigh,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Your turn, Dad,” my oldest said.<\/p>\n

“The water ripples, dark and deep,” I said, “calling us to our long sleep.”<\/p>\n

Okay, okay, so I just mangled a line from Robert Frost. Hey, I was driving on a narrow back road through a swamp, trying to remember a poem that was being created on the fly. Give me a break.<\/p>\n

“My brother begins to weep,” my youngest son said.<\/p>\n

“Hey,” his brother shouted. “No I don’t!”<\/p>\n

“It’s gone far enough,” I said. “I’m stealing lines from Frost, and you guys are starting to twist it to take shots at each other. Let’s call it done.”<\/p>\n

They agreed.<\/p>\n

Here, in all its glory, is our wandering a swamp road poem. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

The road is low,\u00a0the water is high.<\/em>
\nThe moon is shining bright in the sky.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The black and white cranes look like\u00a0they’re going to cry.<\/em>
\nWe watch them go with a happy sigh.<\/em><\/p>\n

The water ripples dark and deep,<\/em>
\ncalling us to our long sleep.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

My brother begins to weep.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not bad, huh? This may become a new part of our wandering the roads tradition.<\/p>\n

[Editor’s note: I apologize for being missing these past two weeks. That’s the longest DaddyTales outage since I started writing them, and it was because of a trip to Germany that I went on for GotChosen<\/a>. The trip caught me somewhat by surprise, and the last minute preparations consumed all my time. Sorry about that!]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After an unplanned two-week outage, DaddyTales is back with, of all things, a poem. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-the-kids"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-Cv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}