{"id":1970,"date":"2026-06-23T11:56:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T11:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2026-07-05T12:08:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T12:08:02","slug":"verdant-bloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"Verdant Bloom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
We the people now have 
a new political party
Team Algae.<\/strong>
They are campaigning 
from the overpass of the highway
on the sides is the Reflecting Pool 
and they are winning.

Our Aquatic Commander in Chief 
tells us, yells us, that
the peeling polymer paint strips
are caused by vandals 
In the form of former 
Gold Olympians 
seeding the pool with not
amber waves of grain, but instead,
with verdant blooms of 'gae, 
\u2014fueled by podium-high audacity! \u2014
allegedly.

With, probably, box cutters
or a Swiss Army knife.
Probably an international caper.
An Auntie Fa, maybe,
slicing three-hundred foot 
swaths of carnage
like a football field-long lame incision
on America\u2019s delicate sourdough loaf.

But my eyes tell me
that two liter bottles 
of hydrogen peroxide
poured at the perimeter, 
on the world's news cameras,
just yesterday,
by a hapless maintenance crew.

Or perhaps,
the extended presidential motorcade 
including The Beast
that tread across the bottom 
of the country\u2019s famous monument 
on some unhinged quest to be First<\/em>! \u2014 
that may have something to say
for the floating polyurea paint debris.

Despite the 24-7 security cameras
we may never know, 
what really happened.
But we have suspicions.

In the end, it seems:

Algae is, 
actually, 
all around us.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cVerdant Bloom\u201d a written Tuesday, June 23, a current events whodunnit exploration, poem 174 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “As Found!” Screenshot from the interwebs, as amended with a star by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,811,311,200,887,271,2,263],"tags":[1682,1690,1586,1689,1680,1685,1692,1694,1686,1288,1683,1688,1684,1496,1556,1678,1687,134,1691,1693,1679,1681],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-current-events","category-generational","category-humor","category-loosely-hinged","category-petty","category-poems","category-snarky","tag-24-7","tag-actually","tag-algae","tag-all-around-us","tag-auntie-fa","tag-box-cutter","tag-first","tag-gold","tag-hydrogen-peroxide","tag-june","tag-motorcade","tag-olympian","tag-perimeter","tag-podium","tag-poem","tag-reflecting-pool","tag-security-cameras","tag-summer","tag-suspicions","tag-swiss-army-knife","tag-team-algae","tag-the-beast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2043,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions\/2043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}