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?

QUIET SPACE

   QUIET SPACE

The space between words
Is a place of great comfort,
Where the mind can rest
And the eye assess
What is to come.
To prepare for the future.
So it is with prayer.

For prayer is the space
Between being and doing.
A place of great quietness
Where the heart can find ease,
Mind and soul
Find new strength
To face whatever lies in front of us.

                                   ©2019 Gwen Grant

FIERCE WIND AND STORM

FIERCE WIND AND STORM

Fog on the fields this morning,
So dense, I could only see
Shapes and shadows
Heading towards me.
Only hear the lovely papery rattle
Of dry leaves
Hanging on a bit longer,
Before the wind
Blows them and the fog
Into oblivion.

Standing at the fence, listening
To the cat’s tiny lappings
Of icy rainwater,
I feel the wind’s new strength,
Triumphant after its cleansing
Of field and hedgerow,
Pulling me and pushing,
Pushing me and shoving,
Until it almost bowls me over.

But I hold on,
With fingers strong and fierce
As wood, new leaf and berry.
For I have a lot to do
Before I allow any storm to blow me
Into oblivion.

©2022 Gwen Grant

LOVERS

 

LOVERS

Either he came along too late,
Or she was born too soon.
Whichever it was,
Those years they had lost
Were wild and wide and gone,
So they had a lot to catch up on.

On both sides,
There were exciting times to talk through.
For each of them,
Desperate days to walk through.
Still, there was plenty to talk about,
Plenty to discover about each other,
Lover to Lover.

So now, all was well and all was well,
For the living was just beginning.
The two of them, together,
Putting time in its place,
Slipping all those lost hours
Into their pockets,
To be remembered only when they felt
Strong enough to face them.

But not now, they decided, not now
And maybe not ever,
Not when the days were shining,
The nights blazing and burning
With no charred mornings to speak of.
Not when a plain old blade of grass
Spoke of heaven,
The heaven that lay in each other
Now time and love were with them,
New Lover loves New Lover.

Old lovers sent to the car wash.

                                          © 2018 Gwen Grant  

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

COLOUR AND CLOTH

COLOUR AND CLOTH

Sorrow is so easy to slip into,
Just checking colours
In the cupboard
Leads us to despair.
What are we to do with crepe-de-chine,
With cotton,
With strident silk mourning bands
The colour of emptiness?

Caught, as they are,
In the fit of a well sewn sleeve
Where needles have pierced
The quiet cloth,
Where silent cries of agony
Have tidied themselves
Into one long breath of servitude
To continued pain.

As sorrow pierces the tiny joy
That is all we have been able to put by,
All we have been able to save
Out of all the years and years
Of longing,
We bow our heads
To the garment of despair.

What are we to do?
What can be done
To ease implacable grief?
Tears and tears and broken tears.

Love is the colour
That saves us.
Love is the cloth
That sends us well clad
To attend the death of grief.

©2022Gwen Grant