I LOVE GATES

I love gates.
Gates are the very things
I am fond of.
Not the huge iron gates
Crackling with steel mesh
And threats,
To keep you in,
But the lovely little
Wooden gates,
Awash with tall grasses
And latches,
To let you out.
These gates, I love.

©2020 Gwen Grant

Hundertwasser

      SPRING SONG

Make this Spring song
A long song,
Make it wild and high
Like a new wind
Whistling old memories
Of elephants
Treading over mountains.

Make it a song
Of seas
Brimming with whales,
Starfish and monsters,
Of ghostly ships sailing
Decked with cobwebs
And old bones rattling.

Make it a song
Of people singing,
Of kind words,
Of gentle hands helping.

Make this Spring song
A long song
Of tenderness,
Of laughter,
With no surprises
Of goblins
Hiding in corners.

Make it a song
Of love.

                      ©2020 Gwen Grant

  IN THE NIGHT

Love illuminates
The fretful darkness.
Gives words of hope
That fill themselves
With meaning.
Lights the stony path
To understanding,
Fills in the empty spaces
As we cross the bridge
To acceptance.

                    ©2020 Gwen Grant

                TANTALIZING POSSIBILITIES

We fall in love on the roll of a dice,
A chance meeting.  Chancing everything on a meeting.
As we plain and seductive creatures
Remain wilfully unaware of the power of our own deep seduction.
For it is we who snap the bolt shut on death and boredom.

So we are always ready to catch some lovely confection
In some other plain beauty.  Some sweetness that draws us in
Until we are in so deep, all that is left is for us to declare
That this is the love which will last for ever,
Outliving any grain of sand or petal of a fading flower.

This love cuts out temptation.  Ends the pull of new desire,
Deletes that relentless ache for someone new.

We make promises quiet as silk slipping over moonlight.
We will love to the end of time, or, at the very least,
We hastily prevaricate, until the end of its own time.

We offer promises aloud, tying them up with a gold ring
Or two.  Often, two. Or with the ringpull of a thin tin can.
But gold or tin, nothing can lock up temptation.
Nothing stop that sudden surge of desire
For a tantalizing possibility inevitably leading to a sorry ending,
Or to a new and bitter beginning.

Nothing, that is, but love, which, as we fully understand,
Happens on the throw of a dice.

                                                        ©2020 Gwen Grant

STORM AT SEA
This is burning life,
This sea.
This blowing wind that whites the world
With foam and icy breath,
Tumbling the sea into a rumpled bed
Upon which ships of myth and legend sail.
Sail or sink
Beneath the green covers,
Lulling themselves to sleep
With the sound of mermaids singing.

                           ©2020 Gwen Grant