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?

MEMORY’S LITTLE HELPER 

 MEMORY’S LITTLE HELPER 

Old Friends and new friends,
Lovers of the past and Lovers of the future,
Tellers of long stories and short ones,
Writers of diaries and letters,
These are the quiet narrators
Of those who share their journey. 

Every single one remembered
In one thankful dash of the pen.
Ready to catch them
On stone, papyrus or paper.
Ready to be passed on from one to the other .

There to live again, now and for ever,
At least, almost  for ever. 

                             © 2021 Gwen Grant.

STORM AT SEA


STORM AT SEA
This is burning life,
This sea.
This blowing wind that whites the world
With foam and icy breath,
Tumbling the sea into a rumpled bed
Upon which ships of myth and legend sail.
Sail or sink
Beneath the green covers,
Lulling themselves to sleep
With the sound of mermaids singing.

                           ©2020 Gwen Grant

PLENTY OF ROOM

The town was packed this morning, everyone enjoying the
sun, arms stretched across the back of the benches.  There are
some trees up near the market and, August or not, a leaf had fallen 
off one of them and lay right in front of me. 
So beautiful I had to write about it.  

PLENTY OF ROOM

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

Full of leaf.
Full of lazy snails
Creeping towards dinner.
Of whip-smart ants
Flying in flawless battalions.
Cogitating, debating,
Thinking hard thoughts
Of nipping and of biting.

This world is
Full of leaf.
Full of chlorophyll and colour,
Of green and brown,
Russet and yellow
Of white leaves and black.

Full of shape and little leaf veins,
Full of tiny tiny spiders
Weaving little tiny webs
All over the fallen leaves.

This world is
Full of leaf.
With plenty of room
For more.

                               ©2023 Gwen Grant.

LATE SUMMER

We live near a National Trust park but I knew it when I was a girl and it was just trees and
all the other lovely things in a familiar wood.  We go up a lot usually but we’ve not been
for some time  because of illness.  We’re gearing up to visit again but this poem
reminds me so much of that lovely place.   I remember standing in one particular spot
and starting to write this poem in my head.   


LATE SUMMER

Late summer now
And the little lost paths
Are dry and cindery under foot;
Dust and the early mist
Curling around the edges of the day. 

A leaf falls, as the trees
Shake their slow golden heads,
Filling the air with the sad sound
Of leaves falling, drifting, tumbling down. 

Over the hedge, the stubbled fields
Sigh, and settle into waiting
For their dry stalks to be ploughed
Into the earth.
Lovely furrows then, stretching
Into the infinity of a much older vision.  

And Autumn dances in the woods,
Her red and orange skirts
Billowing around her twinkling feet.
Her red-berried head bobbing with excitement
As the time comes
When her beauty can be seen in the burning forest,
Her loveliness caught in the cobwebbed hedgerows,
In those tiny, sparkling shawls of light,
That wrap us about
With the fierce grace and beauty of love. 

                                          © 2011 Gwen Grant

THIS IS WHAT THE MAN SAID

Malevich

THIS IS WHAT THE MAN SAID

Tonight, I heard a man say, firmly, and with absolute certainty
That, standing in a holy place, drowned by light and washed with colour,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

He said shafts of sunshine falling through tall windows
Had fallen on his shoulders; delicate green shadows
Catching his lively face, his tapping fingers.
When the sound of pipe and small drum began to practise living,
Lifting the silence, lifting the weight of emptiness,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

He dryly observed dust motes dancing, registered
How the clear, cold colour of great flowers
Delighting in fabulous vases, carried the tiny clutch of merry daisies
Resting in tin lids of water were carried with them.
Their wild and holy perfume, their tiny constant fragrance
Filling the candle-lit darkness.
Noting his feet, stone still and waiting, yet in their visiting,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

But was he who he thought he was?
Those feet his own feet or the feet of the restless soldier
Standing beside him.
Stone mouth wide open, dusty tongue
Ready to confirm with clarity and with vision,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven!
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

   Well, then.

                                                ©2023 Gwen Grant