When I was a child, I was sent away for a year for my health.  Everything there was the exact opposite to my home.  No bright colours as at home and, of course, with so many children to care for, instead of love, there was an impartial interest and care.  There are many times we would not go back to and this was one of them.

          LET IT BE

Last night,
The apple tree turned white,
Its wide skirts trembling
As if some fabulous ballerina
Was dancing over the grass.

For a moment,
I was taken back
To my childhood.
Looking at an apple tree
Through a window,
Where my finger nail
Scraped long strands of frost.

Then I was a long way from home.
A long way from love and colour,
Close to dark uniforms,
To squares of aprons
Crackling in snowy starchiness.
White caps like fearful torches
Breaking the dusky violet night,
Making me weep for home.

                                     Now making me glad that none of us
                                     Can inhabit the past.

                             © Gwen Grant

 

 

                       SOLITARY

To be deaf
Means more than not to hear,
It means being locked out,
Shut up,
Confined
In a room designed for one
And no bigger.

To be deaf
Means watching lips,
Becoming expert on mouths
That shout
Or slur,
So that it is impossible to hear
What anyone is saying.

To be deaf
Means walking in silence,
Yet hearing music
From speechless eyes,
Soundless operas
Pouring over deaf ears,
Flowering the emptiness.
                        © Gwen Grant

        RESURRECTION

We all have our own Gethsemane
When times are against us,
When, faultless and perfect,
Darkness no longer has an airy lightness
But falls upon us
With the full weight of sorrow.

From Gethsemane there comes always
That long walk to the crucifixion of hope,
That slow procession into loneliness,
That sombre step into a darkness, where love
Becomes nothing but an old and lovely dream.

Yet that dark garden,
Those dark blossoms flowering,
Flame with the resurrection of a living hope,
Throwing light into the darkness,
Bringing peace to the desolate,
Making all love new,
Its eternal promise forever redeeming,
That where love is,
Time no longer has any meaning.
                                   © Gwen Grant

             TAKE IT EASY

The days go round so fast,
Even as we watch the clock,
These hours chasing hours
Make us feel
As if we are pinned
To the centre of time.

The ordered, carefree minutes,
Race away like stars
Falling into memory.
Unstoppable,
Wholly uncontrollable,
So fast, so giddy,
Sparks fly out of our eyes,
Fire springs from our fingers
And from our feet,
Tiny flames of life lick the startled air.

We sing
Of rosy days.
Psalm the stateliness
Of lost,
Frost-bitten hours.
Eternally blazing
Into whatever comes next.
                               © Gwen Grant