We travelled down this road in northern Scotland late one evening and it was so wreathed in a heavy grey mist that when the road dipped down, we couldn’t even
see the hedgerows. As we moved higher, however, the mist thinned out enough
so that it looked like long folds of silk blowing across the fields. Then the moon appeared and the sky and the road looked just like this.
NIGHT ON A COUNTRY ROAD
There were six angels playing in the sky tonight,
Tossing stars to each other with easy grace,
Their long grey skirts whirling
Over the country road beneath them.
All was still.
All was silent.
All beauty just a memory,
Until steady beams of light
Came shining down the darkness,
Startling the flowers into sudden radiance,
Chasing the twisty grey smokiness
Over the hedgerows,
As the lovely, familiar sound of a tractor
Came rolling through the air.
Then the whisper of grass
As a rabbit tracked through it,
The long, long sigh of an owl’s wings
And the hoarse, sweet sound of the tractor,
Rose up as a prayer.
© 2018 Gwen Grant
Poems by Gwen Grant 