AND WHEN NIGHT COMES

Easter Sunday – when I was a girl, all the children wen to Sunday school, the girls
with new candy striped dresses, white ankle socks and black patent leather shoes and the boys in short grey trousers and new shirts with a sleeveless pullover.  I loved my candy striped dress, sometimes pink, sometimes green.  Happy Easter Sunday.

      AND WHEN NIGHT COMES

And when night comes
And darkness drifts over the earth
And fields vanish
And hedgerows become blurs of colour,
And the falling frost
Lays a bridal veil on the darkened grass,
And the lovely trees,
And all trees are lovely,
Fill the darkness with their magnificence
And their little inked-in leaves
Chuckle and rustle and whisper of the love
Shown for us in the drenching beauty of the night,
And the thin, thin beam of moonlight
Shines down like hope shining
Through the darkness of all those lost lives,

Well, then, that anxious heart
Staring through the midnight glass
Should find rest.
But those ears are deaf,
Those eyes blind to the radiance of the night,
Seeing only the darkness of the hour,
And then, for it is then, the frightened,
The fractured heart cries aloud,
‘O God, my God, where are you?’ 

And as the dying echoes of those trembling sounds
Vanish into the vanished fields
And sink into the blurry hedgerows,
The little inked-in leaves rustle and chuckle
And whisper those eternal words of love.
‘I am the light to your darkness,
I am the hope to your despair.
I am the peace to your pain.
I am the love you can rest on.’ 

                                              © Gwen Grant