{"id":5322,"date":"2018-03-15T00:20:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T00:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=5322"},"modified":"2018-03-17T00:20:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T00:20:42","slug":"the-third-river-in-the-rain-john-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=5322","title":{"rendered":"THE THIRD RIVER IN THE RAIN  &#8211; John Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love the rain when the rain fills the river,<br \/>\nwhen the rain fills the river, and the river starts to run,<br \/>\nand the willow branches read the braille of raindrops on the surface,<br \/>\nand ducks, reputedly impervious, hide underneath the roadway bridge,<br \/>\nand silent geese glide slantwise to their landing on the river,<br \/>\nand the island in the river sits down lower in the water,<br \/>\nand the tree roots hold the riverbanks,<br \/>\nand the empty branches lift the lowered sky<br \/>\nwhose thickened clouds glow weirdly in the city lights nearby.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nI love the rain when the rain fills the river,<br \/>\nand the river swells with meaning, and its meaning is to run<br \/>\npast the dam at Kingsland Manor, past the strip mall<br \/>\non the highway that was once a marsh,<br \/>\nbut now has a Chipotle, and the river that would fill that marsh<br \/>\nruns black behind the cars that park for dinner,<br \/>\nin a concrete quarantine that drains the rain that falls on Garret Mountain<br \/>\nthrough Essex towns and golf courses<br \/>\nto broaden where it joins the fouled Passaic.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nI love the rain when I walk beside the river,<br \/>\nwhen I walk beside the river on my way home from the city,<br \/>\nfrom the bus stop on the highway, on a pathway<br \/>\nthrough the darkened park, my raincoat soaked,<br \/>\nmy wide-brimmed hat with raindrops dripping from the brim,<br \/>\nwhose felt I smell, whose smell I feel, whose beaver eaves<br \/>\nI walk beneath like the ducks beneath the roadway bridge<br \/>\nwho see me walking past them to my house a few blocks further,<br \/>\na man between his job and home,<br \/>\na home between its innocence and what is yet to come.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nArthur Russell lives in Nutley, New Jersey. His chapbook, <em>Unbent Trumpet<\/em>, was published in 2017 by Nutley Arts Press. He is one of the Gang of Five that manages the Williams Center Readings for the Red Wheelbarrow Collective, and YAWPER of the year at Brooklyn Poets.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals including: <em>Copper Nickel Canyon, Prelude <em>and <\/em>Wilderness House Literary Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love the rain when the rain fills the river, when the rain fills the river, and the river starts to run, and the willow branches read the braille of raindrops on the surface, and ducks, reputedly impervious, hide underneath the roadway bridge, and silent geese glide slantwise to their landing on the river, and [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,287,149],"class_list":["post-5322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-photo","tag-rain-swollen-river-by-jason-hollinger","tag-wikicommons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5322"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5369,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions\/5369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}