STARTING OVER

Sorry I’ve not been able to put up any poems lately
as the computer has been on the blink. I’m so glad to
be back. It’s always good to see late love and the
happiness it brings as, like all love, it opens our
horizons and expands our happiness. It’s good
to remember that late love can happen at any time at
all – and at any age. And when it does come, it’s joy
to the world!

STARTING OVER

Late love,
With all its tenderness,
Turns us all
Into navigators,
Archaeologists,
Gently blowing the dust of years
From the site of yesterday.
Sometimes finding the splendours
Of Carter’s Tutankhamen,
Sometimes bringing to light
A tiny twist of yellow gold,
Its brightness hidden from invaders.

Cautious, careful,
We read books that tell us
How to discover each other.
One mystery sliding alongside another.
Two historians coming together,
Compiling a definitive account
Of their life and times.

You know what?
A hand reaching out for a hand,
A smile answering a smile
Breaks it all down
To where any Lover could build a castle,
Or a small shed if wanted,
With a water feature on the patio.
The oceans of the world
Lapping the edge of the garden.

                                  © GWEN GRANT

PEA PODS AND PROMISES

This was how it was when I was a child and pea-picking time
came round. Five in the morning, mothers up and down the tiny
streets would wake you up until, stumbling, you fell down the
wooden stairs, crashed into the closed door at the bottom, fell
through and drank any cup of tea laid out on the table. A bite
of bread and then the sound of the lorry horn. ‘Out! Out! Out!
everyone shouted and out we went to sit on the lorry trailer,
already full of farm smells but giving another chance to smell
the hedgerows and trees until we got to the pea field. That was
when it was fine and sunny – a different story when it was siling
down with heavy cold rain!

PEA PODS AND PROMISES

Pea pods and pea straws
And fields of green oceans
As far as the eye can see,
And busy little children
Building pea-straw houses
Or getting lost in the green fields
As their mothers pull peas.

They were all told
To keep away from the small river
Where the Kingfisher flew,
Enchanting those who saw
The blue blur, blue on blue.
Tempting one child or another
To slide into the water.

Languorous now, the afternoon wears on,
The sun emptying those green oceans,
The red tractor silent
As little children are found and woken.
Bags weighed,
Coins counted one by one
Into green-dirty hands,
Ready for the waiting corner-shop man.

Time to climb onto the lorry.
Time to go home.

Everything will have changed
In the year that is yet to come,
But the fields will still be full
Of quiet green oceans bringing hope
Of a new harvest.

                                   © GWEN GRANT  

OCTOBER

I’m a few days early for the new month but October
is such an important month somehow that to give
it a bit more space seems only right and proper.
The wood close to where we live has sprouted a blue and
white sign saying it is for sale. It’s only a
leaf and a branch of what it was when we were children
and played there all day long. October saw an end to
this freedom because of the earlier darkness and the
long unfriendly walk home when we were tired and cold
and hungry. Of course, the darkness wasn’t only on the
outside, Deadly Nightshade grew in this wood.

OCTOBER

October now,
Bringing the first sighting of Winter
Leaning on the fence
Like any old farmer
Looking over his fields.

The fox,
Running for cover,
Leaves his tracks
Across the set-aside meadow
Full of weeds,
Thistles and the odd potato
From last year’s crop.

Winter,
Thinking it over
Like any old farmer,
Perches on the farm gate
Planning a harvest
Of icy nights and bitter mornings,
Of frost bitten fingers and frozen water,
Of glittering trees and silver beauty

And white, white air.

                                   © Gwen Grant.

LATE SUMMER

LATE SUMMER

Late summer now
And the little lost paths
Are dry and cindery under foot;
Dust and the early mist
Curling around the edges of the day. 

A leaf falls, as the trees
Shake their slow golden heads,
Filling the air with the sad sound
Of leaves falling, drifting, tumbling down. 

Over the hedge, the stubbled fields
Sigh, and settle into waiting
For their dry stalks to be ploughed
Into the earth.
Lovely furrows then, stretching
Into the infinity of a much older vision.  

And Autumn dances in the woods,
Her red and orange skirts
Billowing around her twinkling feet.
Her red-berried head bobbing with excitement
As the time comes
When her beauty can be seen in the burning forest,
Her loveliness caught in the cobwebbed hedgerows,
In those tiny, sparkling shawls of light,
That wrap us about
With the fierce grace and beauty of love. 

                                          © GWEN GRANT

THE SCENT OF CLOVES

This was my Dad’s garden, too many years ago to count and yet,
the memory of it is as sharp as if I had seen it yesterday.  My father
loved carnations.  Carnations and chrysanthemums, the great,
shaggy headed, curled-over petalled flowers, which were almost
glints of architecture in amongst the more gentle flowers. These
two flowers have kept pace with me all during my life, always
bringing back that which I thought had gone.

THE SCENT OF CLOVES

The garden was full of carnations
Standing in elegant rows like delicate soldiers,
Or curling up together
In friendly circles,
Their silvery green leaves
Supporting each other.

That spicy sharpness of cloves,
That remembered scent of carnations
Filled the air,
Making me dream of other lives
Lived by fabulous people,
Which, one day, I would discover for myself.

But I never did.
For my own life elbowed those dreams
Out of the way
And gave me carnations.

                                © GWEN GRANT

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