The old girl lay sleepless in her bed, Eyes staring through the dark, Fretting at a future she couldn’t see, Worrying at the hours and days and weeks That lay before her. Sleepless, she sighed again and again ‘If only I knew what the future will bring.’ Until the future, hiding behind the door, Listening keenly, stepped in.
Picking up two particularly heavy days, It smacked them round her head. ‘That’s one thing,’ it said.
Then selecting an especially lovely String of hours, Gently laid them round her neck. ‘And that’s another,’ it said. ‘Now, before I go, is there anything else You want to know?’
‘No,’ the old girl whispered, shaking her head, Turning quick and over in her bed. ‘If it’s alright with you, I’ll look at the stars instead.’
Growing older and having survived cancer at 40, a long time ago, certainly focuses the mind on the future and I was very aware of this when I wrote the poem FUTURE TENSE. I've always loved writing and still remember the excitement of the first longer piece of work I did. It was very experimental and I was certain it wouldn't get published. It probably wouldn't have but one of the small magazines, who did such great work for new writers, took that piece and many others. But that wasn't all they did. With infinite kindness, they often pointed out where I could improve my writing.
My first book was a picture book, MATTHEW AND HIS MAGIC KITE, but after that, I started wanting to capture the humour and interest of where I lived, so PRIVATE-KEEP OUT came next followed by KNOCK AND WAIT and ONE WAY ONLY. They're not biographies because all I wanted to do was to catch the spirit of those times.
It would be good if everyone wrote an account of their lives so their times are not lost. So many valuable histories unwritten and unread.
When I was a girl, I loved the American writer, BETTY MACDONALD, with her very funny accounts of her family and her life in the 1940's. But NORMAN MAILER's, 'THE NAKED AND THE DEAD' spun me up to the stars when I stumbled across it in the subscription library I belonged to at fifteen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY's 'CHRISTMAS IN PARIS 1923', was so sublime and beautiful it was like a torch for writers and the Toronto Star Weekly must have published it with joy in their hearts. I wonder if there still is a Toronto Star Weekly?
View all posts by gwengrant
