{"id":4398,"date":"2016-01-04T15:36:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T15:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=4398"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:03:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T12:03:34","slug":"quiet-road-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2016\/01\/04\/quiet-road-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet road home by Dean Parkin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quiet road home\u00a0\u00a0 by Dean Parkin
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

We haven’t spoken for miles and I nearly let it past
\nbut I want to go back, so turn around in a sudden side road,
\na quick shift that squeals wheels, try to explain, I need
\nto show you.<\/em> You’re unsure what’s been said, but won’t ask.<\/p>\n

We’ve gone further than I thought, the road winding
\nup hills I can’t recall coming down, one sharp corner
\nafter another, the day greyer, the drizzle, drab October.
\nThen, there it is, between trunk, bramble, hedge: pumpkins.<\/p>\n

A pumpkin patch. And a trailer-full, a bubbling mass
\nof glowing orange. For the farmer perhaps it’s just work \u2013
\nbend and lift \u2013 but we agree it’s a kid’s picture book,
\na happy ending. We turn around, talk. It’s the talking I miss.<\/p>\n

This is an intense poem, much bigger than it looks, very neatly bracketed by its opening, ‘We haven’t spoken for miles’ and closing ‘It’s the talking I miss’. The whole content, the ‘where exactly is this relationship at?’ is caught in the middle stanza’s initial ‘We’ve gone further than I thought’. And there’s also all the clever evocation of October, the driving, the things seen. And of course the very, very neat last line, which begins ‘a happy ending’ and ends on ‘I miss’. A good sample of Dean’s sophistication as a writer.<\/p>\n

Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an intense poem, much bigger than it looks, very neatly bracketed by its opening, ‘We haven’t spoken for miles’ and closing ‘It’s the talking I miss’. The whole content, the ‘where exactly is this relationship at?’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6111,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions\/6111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}