Month: May 2024

I LOVE GATES

Since life overtook us and walking became a bit difficult, we no longer
go the long country walks we have always been used to, so now our walks
tend to be in the easily accessible town and gates are few and far between. 
That has done nothing to diminish my love of gates and I watch out
for them all the time, from wherever I am.   That gate above is one that
I would feel an impulse to stroke both for the silvery grey old wood and
because even though it is a gate, it seems as if the hand of a friend has
built it.

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

PRIVATE KEEP OUT!  by Gwen Grant
published by Penguin Vintage  Children’s Classics
available in paperback and as an ebook

CHANGING PLACES 

Needless to say, this poem is based entirely on personal experience!  

CHANGING PLACES

The wise woman rises early,
Stepping into clean, fresh clothes,
Pulling on her lovely crease-free trousers,
Her unwrinkled Tee clinging neatly to her shoulders,
Her shoes so sparkling clean and pretty,
Even the flowers admire them. 

‘Bye!’ calls the wise woman,
As she goes singing on her way,
Everyone making room for her.

The tired woman rises far too late,
That extra five minutes somehow getting away from her.
And look! The clothes fairy hasn’t been!
So she wears crumpled Tee and wrinkled trousers.
Her shoes so dusty and dull
Even the flowers try to hide them. 

No ‘Bye!’ from this tired woman,
As she goes yawning on her way. 

But the wise woman makes room for her,
For tired tomorrow, wise today.  

                                                    © 2018 Gwen Grant

 

NIGHT LIGHT

   

We all need a light in the darkness and, sometimes,
it seems to me that one of the most humane inventions
we have  is the lighthouse.

   NIGHT LIGHT

The night was so dark,
So dense,
It could be cut into slices,
Served up
As a taste of what was to come.

Until a small light,
Flickering a thin whiteness
Shone through.
Almost too thin,
Too slight,|
To give hope that its strength
Could count against that terrible
Unknown country in hiding.

Refusing to be extinguished
It shone on and kept shining,
Its thin steadiness
Keeping the lost moving
Until they could see a way forward.

The smallest light
Defeats the vast darkness.

                        ©2024 Gwen Grant

OUR CAT

Our cat was seventeen years old.  He was sweet natured and never
bit and only used his claws in extremis.  He was our grand-daughter’s
cat  but along the way of her moving houses, he came to stay with us for a bit and
never left.  He died last year and it’s only now I’ve felt able to write about
him.  I miss him.   He loved his two knitted shawls. 

OUR CAT

We laid him to rest
Next to the fence,
Close to the daffodils.

Brushing the dead leaves
From where we were to lay him.
Carefully placing his bright shawls
Underneath and around him.

Where the snowdrops flowered
To light the way for him.

A fit resting place for a conqueror to lie,
To listen to eternity whistling.

                       ©2024 Gwen Grant.