CIRCLING ROUND                          

Sometimes lovers are surprised
By their own ardent fire,
Scorched by the ferocity of the flame
Blazing in them.
Until, flying too close to this new sun,
They are wrecked and wounded by rejection. 

But lovers wind the thin linen of consolation
Around a damaged heart.
Forgiving unfulfilled promises,
Waiting it out.
Sure the beloved will ease their pain,
Turn back to them. 

For this is the love they have waited for.
So no wound, mortal or easeful,
Will ever wrest it from them.
Nothing will stop their suffering,
For pain is part of love’s package,
And lovers drown in desire
Until desire destroys them. 

Lost love is a bad dream,
Rejected love, a nightmare.
Only when the ecstasy burns out,
The flame turns to ash, the fire to cinders,
And the old love done with,
Can a new and glorious passion begin. 

                                    © 2017 Gwen Grant

  

       DEATH OF A HEDGEROW 

There was a death here in the field last night
As stars roared down in furious fists of light,
Fiery angels falling upon the wrecked and bone wracked field
That held the little dead close to its poor and wretched ground,
Angels wept and still are weeping. 

The cries of lost frail birds pierced the grieving air,
As the hedgerow with its white blossom and its red,
Its spiders and its spider web,
Its nests of twigs and thin sheep hair
Are ripped out, crushed, and the field laid bare.

The pink dog-rose and the quiet teazle,
The dark green leaves called ‘bread-and-cheese,’
Crisp and sour upon the tongue.
The honey sip from ferocious nettle
That once found rest in the dark hedgerow,
Below the honeysuckle and the wild pink rose,
Gone now and forever gone.  

Now the fiery angels,
Lift the little tender dead in burning arms,
Roar with fury as steel and brick and concrete
Press the primrose and the snowdrop down,
Destroy the buttercup and the rabbit tracks,
Wreck small forgotten stands of corn,
And at the last, kill the gentle quaking grass. 

The hedgerow has gone
And my heart is breaking. 

                                 © 2020 Gwen Grant.

All material on this blog is copyright but if anyone wants to use part of it,
then please get in touch.   http://www.gwengrant.co.uk

On a cold, dark and grumpy morning, I thought how wonderful it would
be to look out on oranges and lemons.  Such generous and hopeful fruits.

     ORANGES AND LEMONS 

We dream of lemon trees,
Lemons clean and sharp,
Shining through the hunched up
Unwilling darkness
Of a garden sunk in frost. 

Our dreams grow wilder,
More voluptuous,
Wishing orange trees
In our small patch,
Each little fruit a captured sun. 

Oranges and lemons,
Whose deep beauty
Brings sun and moon
Into our enraptured
Eyes and hands. 

          © 2020 Gwen Grant

Whenever we go north, we pass a small field which
is so beautiful, we always plan to stop one day and
walk into it.  We’ve seen it in snow and in sunshine
and it always looks totally lovely.  It’s clearly very
old, the stone walls have tiny curling ferns in the
cracks and behind it is a rising slope of hill.

   A SCOTTISH FIELD 

That ancient little field
Has always been there,
With its grass cropped short,
Its stone walls dusty
In the morning sun. 

Each time we come this way,
We say that one day
We will sit in the middle of that field.
Pluck tiny blades of grass
And wind them round our fingers. 

But this is a dream
That seems never to come true.
Yet even whilst we’re swooping past
In a cloud of elegiac dust,
Still we hold on to it.  

                    © 2020 Gwen Grant