{"id":27699,"date":"2021-08-09T21:30:13","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T20:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=27699"},"modified":"2021-08-09T21:30:13","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T20:30:13","slug":"joymount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=27699","title":{"rendered":"Joymount"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week we held our monthly Abingdon share a poem group. I now have three more Abingdon poems to put forward towards the <em>Ten poems about Abingdon<\/em> book. I hope to get about 30 poems from which somebody, as yet unknown,\u00a0 can choose 10. Here is the first. It was written using the voice of a house. It is interesting in poems to become an object or animal and use its voice &#8230;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag21\/2021080904.jpg\" alt=\"Joymount\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Joymount<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For years now I have sat here<br \/>\nGazing at the garden,<br \/>\nWatching it grow, and growing too, more slowly,<br \/>\nFeeling my timbers harden.<\/p>\n<p>Once, younger and smaller,<br \/>\nI looked over fields,<br \/>\nGlimpsed St Helen\u2019s spire and the outskirts of Abingdon,<br \/>\nListened for the church peels.<\/p>\n<p>Back from the road<br \/>\nAnd out of public view,<br \/>\nSnug in our orchards and meadows,<br \/>\nWe Northcourt houses were few.<\/p>\n<p>Now the trees have grown<br \/>\nThat they planted long ago,<br \/>\nCutting the view of those passing in the road &#8211;<br \/>\nHow quickly they grow.<\/p>\n<p>And now, clean on their straight walls<br \/>\nThere are young roofs all round,<br \/>\nNo wisdom in them, no bending to fit the years,<br \/>\nCrowding my ground.<\/p>\n<p>They have driven off the squirrels<br \/>\nThat played once in my trees,<br \/>\nHave turned us old ones into town houses<br \/>\nYearning for a country breeze:<\/p>\n<p>Just a handful now, The Old House,<br \/>\nThe Farmhouse, cottages and pub,<br \/>\nThe young one, posh behind its red wall<br \/>\nYet still we form the hub;<\/p>\n<p>And round us the old hamlet<br \/>\nCan still, though only just, be seen:<br \/>\nSome old walls, lichened roofs, uncertain chimneys,<br \/>\nSome trees and grass between;<\/p>\n<p>But Abingdon has reached out,<br \/>\nSnatching our open spaces,<br \/>\nSqueezing the hamlet, deafening our ears,<br \/>\nRemoving its grace.<\/p>\n<p>And I am left, enclosed, to enfold my humans,<br \/>\nTheir bickering and laughter,<br \/>\nAnd feel the thump of their feet<br \/>\nTickle my beams and rafters.<\/p>\n<p>As ever, I keep them warm<br \/>\nTill their time is done,<br \/>\nAnd guard them like a hen on her clutch,<br \/>\nWinking at the sun.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9\u00a0Justin Gosling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week we held our monthly Abingdon share a poem group. I now have three more Abingdon poems to put forward towards the Ten poems about Abingdon book. I hope to get about 30 poems from which somebody, as yet unknown,\u00a0 can choose 10. Here is the first. It was written using the voice of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-about-abingdon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}