LENNY DANCER

I’m posting this poem again because I so love the picture and I’m quite fond of
the poem, too. I remember so well dancing like this. You had to be a teenager
to do it, so this poem and picture speak to me in so many different ways. And
the lovely setting of the dancers, so relaxed and creative. As for Lenny Dancer,
his skill as a dancer put him way above anyone in our dance hall. He was
much admired. Look at the dancing girl’s shoes!

LENNY DANCER

Tall and thin,
A long-legged, fast and skinny spider,
He was the best dancer in town,
Bar none.

Oh, fabulous dancer,
Burning up the dance floor
With magical steps and glory.
A whirlwind of grace
Caught in deep conversation
With drum and with tumbling piano.

No-one can reach him,
No-one touch him.
No, touch him not for he dances
Deep inside the music.
Where he and his collaborators
Join together in moving
The earth-bound dancer.

Play that piano, Sherlock.

Make music.
Let the great dancer dance,
That we may breathe the dust
Of his skinny spider beauty.

A SHORT TIME LATER

I wrote this companion poem to GOOD FRIDAY.

A SHORT TIME LATER

Full of leaf
The world is.
Full of stem and stalk,
Leaf and tree.
Full of apple blossom,
Yellow dandelions and tiny filaments
Blowing everywhere.

Full of lazy snails
Creeping towards dinner.
Full of moths fluttering
Away from hot lights,
Avoiding lit-up candles.

Full of whip-smart ants
Cogitating, thinking hard thoughts
Of nipping and biting,
Of hurting and marking,
Of green leaf cutting.

Full of colour
The world is.
Full of chlorophyll,
Shape and little leaf veins.
Full of silver lines shining.
Where lazy snails danced
As ants devoured a green apple fallen.

Full of leaf,
The world is.
Full of stem and stalk,
Leaf and tree.

Full of spiders.

Tiny, tiny spiders
Weaving tiny, tiny webs
To wrap around cold and frightened shoulders,
To catch apple blossom falling,
To start this lovely world with Love,
All over again.

GOOD FRIDAY

This is a day that always has an echo in my heart. I’ve published
this poem before but my memories of Good Friday are so
vivid and loved, the Chapels, the people, the singing, the glorious
words that relate its sombre story always there to hold me, seem
eternally new.

GOOD FRIDAY

So now it begins with the sun striking through the tall windows,
Onto the old brown pews and onto the pulpit,
Onto the slender Cross where the weight of this weeping world
Is carried on helpless shoulders,
Onto the crown of thorns blazing in the shadows,
Burning the darkness with its crimson glory.

This is not a gentle day, yet gentleness persists in breaking through,
For the soaring arc of the wide blue banner
Painted on the far wall of the Chapel,
Painted high above the polished table where blue scented grasses
Quiver in a silver goblet, unquestioning and faithful,
Presents to us those golden words painted on that lovely blue arc,
Words that insist ‘GOD IS LOVE’
Which gently insist it is this we must always remember.

The singing is bright now, pausing, darkening, lifting, soaring,
Until a sudden startling descant adds its own touch of glory
To all tough and tender hearts caught in a flesh
Ever subject to death and to corruption, yet ever open to joy.
These singers of sacred songs seek the strength of God as they sing
And in those three plain words, GOD IS LOVE, find it.

Then the crisp cold air smelling faintly of lavender
Drifts like a prayer into the silence and the silence is profound
As silence always is when God is listening.
And God is always listening.
And love is always sending its quiet hope out into the world.

THAT OLD DINOSAUR BIRD

The birds are very busy just now and they zip past our windows on their ever hasty
way but every now and again, one of these lovely creatures lands at the bottom of
our garden and we get to see the heron in all its archaic wonder and grace. They are so
totally beautiful that, as we used to say, their utter loveliness completely
knocks your socks off.

THAT OLD DINOSAUR BIRD

That old dinosaur bird came galumphing down the river
Like an aeroplane on its last legs,
Whose engine is bumping and jumping
Through the twilit air.

Not the most graceful bird,
But incredibly beautiful in a Picasso’ish kind of way,
And Picasso would be thrilled to paint him
If he had his time again,
And make of that heron
A rapturously lovely, joyful,
Sort of dazzling cubist display.

Uh oh, there he goes again!
Crashing down so close to the water
He could dip his long archaic beak
Into the river and spear a fish.
Or seize that crouching ginger cat watching him
And flip it into the trees for the fun of it.

‘SPLASH’ he goes, and the whole river shudders,
Other birds whistle and shake their heads,
‘Dinosaur bird,’ you can almost hear them say,
‘When are you ever going to learn to land
In a proper, elegant, bird-of-flight’ish sort of way?’
But that bony bird doesn’t care.
He just flaps away.

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

CHILDREN WALKING

When I was ten and very poorly, I was sent to a kind of hospital school three
hundred miles away from my home to get better. I felt so lost, unhappy and
alone, I ran away on a night thick with snow, determined to get back home.
I’d read all the stories of children on their own – Hansel and Gretel, Snow
White, the children in the Bible constantly on the move and they consoled
me. But here we are, decades later, and like the children in the stories I
told myself all those years ago, they are still being pursued by the inhumanly
vicious. When will it end?

CHILDREN WALKING

That night, in wicked December,
When the moon shone
Through the dark tops of trees
Onto the sparkling snow.
The sea rolling over the silent sand,
The water so cold and slow
Even Neptune was frozen,
Frightened by the frost hardened foam.

That was the night she began
The three hundred mile walk home.
Sure it would take no time at all.

She was sick of the great old house
In dark shadow behind her,
With its white beds, white walls
And fierce purple uniforms.
She wanted to sleep in her own bed,
With the candle on the window sill,
Unlit, but ready for any emergency.
A bad dream. The eerie sound
Of a bogeyman almost upon her.

As she walked, she remembered
All the stories she had heard
Of children walking.
Walking back to their own home,
Looking for a new one.
Some together. Some like her, alone.
Walking through flame and fire and snow,
Through desolation.

She didn’t get home that night,
Neither did they.
Even Neptune almost didn’t make it.
But they remember,
Those children walking alongside each other,
That night in wicked December.

And still they walk,
Told in new stories of new suffering,
New desolation,
Of new bogeymen now upon them,
Told in the old story of the breakdown of love.

	Schnark on NO-ONE VISITS US, ANYMORE…
	camilla wells paynte… on PAGAN WEDDING
	camilla wells paynte… on LENNY DANCER
	tracykard on A SHORT TIME LATER
	gwengrant on HERON FLYING HOME