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 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

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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FIERCE WIND AND STORM

Fog on the fields this morning,
So dense, I could only see
Shapes and shadows
Heading towards me.
Only hear the lovely papery rattle
Of dry leaves
Hanging on a bit longer,
Before the wind
Blows them and the fog
Into oblivion.

Standing at the fence, listening
To the cat’s tiny lappings
Of icy rainwater,
I feel the wind’s new strength,
Triumphant after its cleansing
Of field and hedgerow,
Pulling me and pushing,
Pushing me and shoving,
Until it almost bowls me over.

But I hold on,
With fingers strong and fierce
As wood, new leaf and berry.
For I have a lot to do
Before I allow any storm to blow me
Into oblivion.

© GWEN GRANT

ONE AND ONE

She had forgotten how to count.
‘One and one,’ I said.
Fast answer.
‘Seventeen.’
‘Not quite.’ A long frowning silence.
‘Let’s try again.’ I said.

She was in a room of her own
Down a long brown corridor.
And she hated it.
Couldn’t remember how she’d got there
But the silence, the empty spaces, the bare walls,
With no-one to talk to or smile at,
And no-one to talk to her or smile back,
Just piled sadness on sadness.

Then, her eyes clearing,
‘Thirty-nine,’ she cried.
Until reading my face, slowly went on,
‘That’s probably wrong.’

‘If only George was here,’ she fretted.
‘He’d soon put things right.’
But my Dad was long gone,
His warmth and kindness
Lying under a marble headstone
And a bunch of daffodils.
IN LOVING MEMORY
Tick-tocking above his good name.

‘One and one. Seventeen,’ she tried again.

I was tempted to let that go.
After all, seventeen wasn’t that far from one.
When suddenly, surprising us both,
‘Two!’ she rapped out. ‘One and one make two.’
And the long sun slid across the wall,
Her eyes closed. Tired now,
Half asleep, she whispered, ‘Do you remember
The Kingfisher swooping over green water?’

© GWEN GRANT