{"id":2505,"date":"2006-03-21T19:55:28","date_gmt":"2006-03-22T02:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=2505"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:44:18","slug":"only-the-emptiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/03\/21\/only-the-emptiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Only The Emptiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Only The Emptiness<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With civilized tones we said good-bye,<br \/>\nas his face drained white<br \/>\nhis still fingers chilled.<br \/>\nIt was a hard labor<br \/>\nhis leave-taking, punctuated<br \/>\nby lung fluid gurgling,<br \/>\neyes rolled upward,<br \/>\nbreath stopping, pausing long.<\/p>\n<p>We sat vigil and held his hand all night.<\/p>\n<p>Still the stomach growls, eyes grow heavy,<br \/>\nthe crematorium must be paid.<br \/>\nI whisper his name,<br \/>\nfeel no answer, sense no presence<br \/>\nof spirit, as some people do.<br \/>\nOnly the emptiness.<\/p>\n<p>Another poem written using this <a href=\"http:\/\/immaculateconniption.blogspot.com\/2006\/03\/another-good-exercise-from-practice-of.html\">exercise<\/a>, and built with Jane Kenyon&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/poetry\/180\/004.html\">The Blue Bowl<\/a> as scaffold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only The Emptiness With civilized tones we said good-bye, as his face drained white his still fingers chilled. It was a hard labor his leave-taking, punctuated by lung fluid gurgling, eyes rolled upward, breath stopping, pausing long. We sat vigil and held his hand all night. Still the stomach growls, eyes grow heavy, the crematorium [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,28,16,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aenigmas","category-humanities","category-nature","category-poetry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10327,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions\/10327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}