Author: gwengrant

Growing older and having survived cancer at 40, a long time ago, certainly focuses the mind on the future and I was very aware of this when I wrote the poem FUTURE TENSE. I've always loved writing and still remember the excitement of the first longer piece of work I did. It was very experimental and I was certain it wouldn't get published. It probably wouldn't have but one of the small magazines, who did such great work for new writers, took that piece and many others. But that wasn't all they did. With infinite kindness, they often pointed out where I could improve my writing. My first book was a picture book, MATTHEW AND HIS MAGIC KITE, but after that, I started wanting to capture the humour and interest of where I lived, so PRIVATE-KEEP OUT came next followed by KNOCK AND WAIT and ONE WAY ONLY. They're not biographies because all I wanted to do was to catch the spirit of those times. It would be good if everyone wrote an account of their lives so their times are not lost. So many valuable histories unwritten and unread. When I was a girl, I loved the American writer, BETTY MACDONALD, with her very funny accounts of her family and her life in the 1940's. But NORMAN MAILER's, 'THE NAKED AND THE DEAD' spun me up to the stars when I stumbled across it in the subscription library I belonged to at fifteen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY's 'CHRISTMAS IN PARIS 1923', was so sublime and beautiful it was like a torch for writers and the Toronto Star Weekly must have published it with joy in their hearts. I wonder if there still is a Toronto Star Weekly?

LITTLE BROWN HENS AND RED

 Where we lived when I was a girl, most of the gardens
around us were like my Dad’s. Full of vegetables, fruit,
flowers and hens. They were beautiful gardens and I
remember our garden with great fondness.

This poem has already been published but I’ve been thinking
about my family quite a lot lately, especially my Dad, so here is
a poem I wrote about him and his garden.  I only have to
picture the garden in my head and it’s there, always in sunshine and
with the hens darting about, hiding wherever they can.   Gardens 
are priceless for what they bring to us.

LITTLE BROWN HENS AND RED

My father’s garden was full of little brown hens
High stepping, tippy tapping in and out of the daffodils,
Pecking at the Spring mint, settling in the potato patch,
Always protesting, always complaining.
Not enough of this.  Too little of that.
The wicked tortoiseshell cat pinning them down
With eyes greener than the very grass they trod on.

They would crowd around the kitchen door,
Indignant little bodies demanding hen justice.
But they liked their bit of my father’s garden
With worms trying to live quietly beneath them.

Until my cousin came with his hard hands,
Hungry eyes and a heart intent on killing,
Then I went out shouting,
Scattering the little brown hens and the red,
Causing the dark cockerel
To turn his bitter, livid eye on my hateful presence.

Squawking, they fled, hiding under the hen coop.
Darting into the rhubarb leaves at the back of the tree.
But when my cousin kept coming, when his boots broke
The sunny daffodils, I pushed him so hard, he fell over,
I didn’t care about him.

For my little red hens and brown,
The arrogant cockerel with his angry eyes
All lived to tuck themselves up again
And sleep their tiny pulsing sleep.

To wake in the morning,
Ready for another really interesting day. 

                                          ©2020 Gwen Grant                        

ALL THE BLUE IN THE WORLD

At our front doorstep, we have a tiny flower, much smaller than the
other flowers around it, and yet it is so blue, its blueness shines out
and turns all the other lovely flowers into handmaidens. This flower
is called LITHODORA.

ALL THE BLUE IN THE WORLD

This tiny flower,
Smaller than a baby’s smallest finger,
is so blue,
The wonder is that any blueness
is left in the world,
Drenched and drowned in colour
as this little flower is.

There is passion here,
A deep, unfailing tenderness
In its tiny petalled perfection.
Nothing has been held back,
No scintilla of grace denied
To this small and lovely blossom.

This scrap of beauty,
Its clear blue flame
Shining down the damp and grassy darkness,
Lights the dark path in front of us,
Giving a sudden, startling glimpse
Of a blazing, generous love.

                                     © 2013 GWEN GRANT

THE PROPHET AT MY ELBOW

Stuck at home on a beautiful day, sun shining, breeze blowing, I yearn
to be out – out – out- after a week of enforced staying-in! So here’s
a poem I wrote years ago which takes me right back to that lovely
place.
We have a national park close to us which is a thing of beauty and
which contains such loveliness, you have to make yourself go home. 
The park is on old ground and standing on it, there is that eternal
feeling of all that has gone before and all that will come in the future. 
This park seems to include the sky as part of its sheer loveliness.   

 THE PROPHET AT MY ELBOW

Early Winter, and the geese are sailing
In a long straight line down the river,
Not knowing where they are going
But going, anyway,
Turning at the curve then coming back.
By their side, the wind is puffing up
Little drops of sunny water.

And as if the prophet was standing by me,
I became aware of the immense blue vault of the heavens.
Through the light of day, saw the hidden night,
With one star blazing brighter than all the others.

My feet were firm on solid ground,
Yet beneath them, I saw mountains biding their time,
Deserts flowering, and lights of cities not yet built all shining,
And the prophet, standing at my elbow, whispered,
‘Here is loveliness beyond all telling.’

Mid-winter, and the geese are sailing
In a long straight line down the river.
Their angry little eyes a snapping song of reluctant praise
To the love that made them.
And the prophet, standing at my elbow, whispered
Of the steadfast love and hope that lives in all creation.

                                                       © 2018 Gwen Grant

SILENT MOVIES

I have always dreamt and some of  my dreams strike 
into my heart with the very first pictures which show me
where I am because from here, I know exactly what is
going to happen.  Is that a bus stop with a bus rolling by,
ignoring the outstretched hand of a person wanting to get on? 
Why yes it is!  And that person is me.  This is the start of
 a dream that always frightens me because I have to walk
home in deep darkness and untold terrors fall upon me on
that journey.

SILENT MOVIES

Little children
Lying quietly in their beds,
Dreaming.
Flushed faces,
Closed eyes
Flickering like old silent movies,

Shadows
Of hidden worlds,
Of unknown people
Demanding attention.

All we can do, watching,
Is hope that all is well
In these places we cannot enter.
That each child will be safe
Until they awaken.

That every traveller
On the high plains
Of hesitant fear and aloneness
Will find the keys
Of this unknown kingdom
And retreating,
Lock the doors tight
Behind them.

Dropping the keys
Into deep water.

©2024 Gwen Grant

I KNOW YOUR FACE

 I wrote this poem many years ago and sold it to a national magazine. However,
I didn’t know when it was being published but, one day, at a Railway station, at
the start of a long journey, I bought  a copy of this magazine, opened it, and there
was the poem! I spent the whole of that journey reading the print off the page.

      I KNOW YOUR FACE

I know your face as I know my own,
And yet, one odd glance
Surprised your outside face looking in
At me.
Odd.  I thought I knew you well,
Yet there you were.  A stranger.

So many years have gone by since we met
And loved by firelight.
I remember asking what you were thinking
about,
And listening.
Since then, it can’t be that I haven’t listened.
Just never asked again. 

                                              © 2018 Gwen Grant