It was cold when I set out
\nthe sort of cold
\nwhere the air feels dry
\nas the moisture freezes<\/p>\n
The park fenced around by shadowed
\nblack railings kept no one in
\nthe remains of a forgotten hedge
\ndid not stir to the fluster of small birds
\nnor children call to their parents
\nfrom the play equipment
\neven the students, who I’ve seen
\non other nights drink wine
\ntogether on the communal swing
\nhad not ventured out
\nno drunks shared cider on the empty bench
\nand beyond though still floodlit
\nthe playground was deserted by
\ncricketer and basketball player alike.<\/p>\n
As I passed the orange\u00a0 haze of
\nthe street light
\na few flakes of snow
\ndrifted down through the light
\nand I heard the rhythm
\nof South America drums echo
\nthrough the surrounding houses
\nthe smell of Chinese or Italian takeaways
\ndrifted out of hot shop doorways
\nmingling with the yeasty
\nsmell of the overcrowded local
\na ring of Hindi jittered from a passing taxi
\nthe far side of the playground’s dark mesh.<\/p>\n
This poem I published in\u00a0 “Everything Looks Green From Here” a collection of prose and poetry from Broomspring Writers in 2010<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was cold when I set out the sort of cold where the air feels dry as the moisture freezes The park fenced around by shadowed black railings kept no one in the remains of a forgotten hedge did not stir to the fluster of small birds nor children call to their parents from the … Continue reading Winter in the Park<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jengiejon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}