{"id":2249,"date":"2026-07-24T14:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2249"},"modified":"2026-07-31T22:08:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:08:53","slug":"afternoon-delight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2249","title":{"rendered":"Afternoon Delight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The world is cruel and callous;
politicians pander and cajole.
Heat index breaks records and dreams;
Paris melts and Bordeaux burns.

I turn my phone, my small screen,
away from me, it's banished.
For the next seven minutes,
I will be here minding my business:
palming a bowl of warm blueberry pie
topped with two curlicue scoops, 
not just one, of vanilla bean 
ice skating on hot berries. 

Because life is short and scary
and once in a while
in the midst of all the chaos,
be it engineered or organic,
I must surely fit in 
just for myself
a few quiet minutes
draped in the sunbeams 
for an afternoon delight
that leaves me with the reminder 
that life can be sweet.

Once spoon clatters to empty dish,
life will return at full volume.
But for now, life is this moment, 
small and real and worth it.
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAfternoon Delight,\u201d the small pleasures of summer berry pie on a July afternoon, pausing from the chaos of the news cycle for a wee bit, written Friday, July 24, 2026 poem 205 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Afternoon Delight” by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[2095,2096,2098,2103,1142,2102,2097,1838,932,1558,2101,129,2093,2094,2100,2099,2092,134,71],"class_list":["post-2249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-poems","tag-bordeaux","tag-burns","tag-callous","tag-chaos","tag-cruel","tag-engineered","tag-heat-index","tag-high-summer","tag-ice-cream","tag-july","tag-organic","tag-paris","tag-phone","tag-politicians","tag-scary","tag-short","tag-small-screen","tag-summer","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249","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=2249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}