{"id":2849,"date":"2026-10-01T23:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2849"},"modified":"2026-10-16T00:56:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T00:56:44","slug":"veil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2849","title":{"rendered":"Veil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Steering wheel turns slowly,<br>I aim away from navigational hazards.<br>Captains fear icebergs; <br>I'm more concerned<br>for hidden children lurking in leaf piles.<br><br>A smart phone-entranced walker<br>meanders with a telling<br>under-the-social-influenced waddle.<br><br>A pair of leashed dogs dart close and far, <br>stretching on their tethers in competing directions, <br>unpredictably pouncing or stopping, <br>never in tandem.<br><br>The toddler girls down the street <br>(who are now, somehow, in third grade)<br>rush to the center of the road, <br>then belatedly turn their heads right <br>to bathe their retinas in my headlights.<br><br>I crest the hill, and with my climb<br>comes the plummy shroud of dwindling light <br>a familiar, dark embrace of the forest, <br>its encompassing, shielding canopy <br>stretching over the evening, pulling dusk closer.<br><br>On my left, gargantuan humeri <br>emerge from a deciduous leaf-strewn yard.<br>One pair of ulna and radius <br>root down into the mulch exerting force.<br><br>Its other arm upturned, <br>its skeletal phalanges outreached towards the sky.<br>Joining the woods in summoning the veil of night,<br>my bony neighbor bids me adieu.<br><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cVeil,\u201d skirking the edge of light and dark on a winding drive home, written Thursday, October 01, 2026 poem 274 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: &#8220;Yin and Yang: Mulch meets Asphalt,&#8221;  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[2677,1415,2962,798,739,687,2964,1616,971,2963,2961,709],"class_list":["post-2849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-poems","tag-autumn","tag-bones","tag-canopy","tag-dusk","tag-fall","tag-forest","tag-navigational-hazards","tag-october","tag-skeleton","tag-smart-phone","tag-walkers","tag-woods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849","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=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2920,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions\/2920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}