When I was a girl, the winters were ferocious. The street I lived in was a small street with no more than about a half dozen houses down each side. Every house, or so it seemed to me, had a polished table in their front room and over that table was a chenille cloth. Our cloth was red with bobbles hanging all round it. I only have to close my eyes to remember the thick rich feel of that cloth and I don’t have to do anything to remember my sister.
SPRING TO WINTER
The world goes round in tight circles
As I have always known it would.
Its intention always to go
From Spring to Winter
In one breath.
When I was first tall enough
To see over the table top,
The bobbled red chenille cloth
Cherried in my fingers,
I learnt then of dying,
For in my house that winter
Our Spring baby died.
That snow pulsed afternoon,
The old scissor-grinder, out-lighted,
Stood under the gas lamp
Stoning blades of knife and scythe and scissor,
Sparks spinning from his wheel
As if that winter day was Carnival.
I ran from him,
Snowflakes melting my eyes
As I wept for my sister,
Suddenly afraid of the scythe
And afraid of the scissor.
© Gwen Grant
Poems by Gwen Grant 