WILLIAM AT HOME

William Shakespeare lives at our house,
Lounging on the sofa,
Perched on a corner of an old brown chair.
He lives here and he resides outside
In the old part of town.
Speaking whenever he fancies,
His ‘thee’s’ and ‘thou’s’ as familiar to me
As the words I heard as a child.

For right from childhood, I understood
That deep, warm speech.
Wrapped it round me like a coat.

We all loved him for it.
This William who is so much a part of us,
It sometimes seems he breathes for us
And keeps us alive
In the pages of a book.

                                         ©2019 Gwen Grant

          QUIET SPACE

The space between words
Is a place of great comfort,
Where the mind can rest
And the eye assess
What is to come.
To prepare for the future.
So it is with prayer.

For prayer is the space
Between being and doing.
A place of great quietness
Where the heart can find ease,
Mind and soul
Find new strength
To face whatever lies in front of us.

                                   ©2019 Gwen Grant

 

           

         LET IT GO

It isn’t only the immediate pain,
It is the acquired pain
That troubles and torments the pockets of the mind
With its terrible, unending energy,
Of memories that hurt and burn, scald and bite,
Feeding on our disasters,
Growing fat and greedy on our cataclysmic tragedies.

At least, this is what we think
As we survey the wreckage behind us
And the very uncertain structure that lies ahead,
Of a life that has somehow accommodated
A train crash of gargantuan proportions,
Or, maybe, to others, a bump of Lilliputian dimensions
Blown up like a balloon.

Until that fretful thinker suddenly says,
‘Ah, sod it,’ and finally lets the whole of it float away,
To leave behind a nice, clean life sheet to scribble on.
Oh, what joy to start again.
To forgive as many times as we need to.

                                           ©2019 Gwen Grant

I’ve been in hospital so my blog has been neglected.  I’m home now and this is where I would like to visit again, even though we’re a bit later than Spring.

 

         BLUE TIME IN SPRING TIME 

Walking over them, I half expected to fall
Into the great blue gaiety of a perfect sunny sky,
For the small blue flowers, no bigger than a grain of corn,
Were blue stars under my feet, their eternal beauty
Starring this world through the tender hand of love. 

There is a deep tenderness in this wood, a deep love,
For here the purple flower, there, the red.
Now a creamy bank of butter yellow blossom gleaming in the shadows,
Delighting, enchanting, lifting up to their own joyful gaiety
All those who walk under the dappling leaves.
The trees themselves swaying with delighted laughter
At this sunny celebration. 

Beyond the blue flowers,
Beyond the pale grey stone and faded tags of leafy gold,
A fish leaps up through the sunlit water,
Glittering blue against the brown washed banks of the lake
drying in the morning sun,
And a swan glides by in slow, grave beauty. 

Down this path the dandelion, that shock headed golden explosion,
Almost touches the red petals of a heavy blossomed tree,
A tiny goldfinch darting amongst them.
In the distance, a flash of blue as a jay flies to a far horizon,
Whilst a rich darkness shows up the blue black crow.
The squirrel pauses on its tiny orange feet
And the drake flies low, a dash of iridescent blue.
Then the blowing leaves whirl their tiny shadows under the trees
And the blue wash of bluebells turns the forest floor into a dark blue sea. 

And in a thousand, thousand places,
In the bramble and in the thorn,
In the dark silhouette of twigs lying flush against the blue sky,
In the fallen flowers lying on the grass,
In the purple and the red and the water floating blue.
The blue bells ring this steady proof of love. 

                                                       ©GWEN GRANT