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?

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

 

       

                  OUT OF THE DARKNESS

When it’s all over bar the shouting,
When the last tear has fallen
And the shocked heart has settled
Once more to its beating.
When the requiem for the lost
Has played its final bleak murmuring
And sorrow brings the broken to their knees,
That is when all that is left is love,
Love is all that is left.

But what good is left-over love
To the shattered heart?
What good is hope
Lying broken in the darkness?

Out of the darkness come the rains
To fill the dry beds of rivers
With water moving silky as young women sleeping,
Rolling and twisting, twisting and turning,
Their long bony feet stretching thinly behind them;
When trees come to leaf like young men leaping
Up branches to touch the first floor of heaven,
Strong hands full of leaves, now full of flowerings
And dry deserts blooming.  

So when all is said and done,
The requiem over and silence soft fallen.
That is when all that is left is love
                 And love is all.

                                                     ©2019 Gwen Grant    

HERON FLYING HOME


HERON FLYING HOME

There they all are, one after the other,
Herons going home.
Black shapes against a fading sky,
Beautiful and prehistoric,
None of them looking
At the shadowed trees below them.

Until one crashes the dark branches
To land in moon touched mud
At the side of the silent river.
Looking a bit like a witch
On a wicked broomstick,
Scratchy twigs sweeping
All the little creatures
Out of its imperious way.

Now the trees in the heronry
Are heavy with sleeping birds,
Each quietly contained,
All wrapped up in themselves.

The first stars pricking the sky,
The long dark fish in the water
Flashing a sudden brief silver,
Sharp eyes promising
To eat them in the morning.

Whilst, we, made of earth and sky,
Fold into the stars.  Fold into the trees.
And, at the last, fold into the heron.

                                   © 2020 Gwen Grant

A NIGHT AT THE PUB

     A NIGHT AT THE PUB

Mario Lanza began to sing
And from a far corner of the crowded room,
Another Mario joined in.
Another and another,
Until the whole place rang
With song and laughter.

Then, in his far corner, Elvis stood,
Quietly singing of love and loss,
Singing of a real reality
Until, one by one, they all fell silent.
Even the drunks hushed their slurred words,
Listening to a song of loss and loneliness
So intense, life meant nothing.

The Bar was silent, breathless with memory
As Elvis sang, and when he was done,
Mario began again.
And beer was passed from Bar to drinker.
Someone ordered a cheeky Campari,
With bright red cherry and a paper umbrella.
Whoa!  Hold the soda.

Night pressed against the Pub’s lit windows,
But no-one wanted to go,
To be swallowed by the darkness,
Wanted only to stay here in the mad brightness,
Listening to the singing,
Listening to the daft loons laughter,
Gulping Lager in the corner
And watch the girls swinging
On the tiny, tiny dance floor.
Dancing as if dancing could conquer
The songs they were hearing.
As if being young could conquer everything.

Strange to meet Mario and Elvis here,
Two bony young fellows singing to the drunk and to the sober,
Singing to drown or lighten the drinker’s sorrows.               

                                                     © 2019 Gwen Grant

LITTLE MOTH

LITTLE MOTH

Last night,
In this cool dark room,
A little moth flew in
Through a half-open window,
A tiny glitter of light
Drawing it to me.

Where, for a moment,
It was in great danger.
Flying so close to my face
I felt the air from its beating wings.

Pressing my lips together,
I stopped breathing,
For fear of causing
This tiny moth’s destruction.

The room itself swept it away,
Whirling it into a far corner
Of melting darkness.
Its silver wings folding and fluttering
Fast as a geisha’s fan.

Airy and joyful,
Flirting with the night,
The tiny creation danced
Through the half-open window,
Bringing gaiety to the darkness,
Leaving me enchanted.

©2022 Gwen Grant

 TANTALIZING POSSIBILITIES

                TANTALIZING POSSIBILITIES

We fall in love on the roll of a dice,
A chance meeting.  Chancing everything on a meeting.
As we plain and seductive creatures
Remain wilfully unaware of the power of our own deep seduction.
For it is we who snap the bolt shut on death and boredom.

So we are always ready to catch some lovely confection
In some other plain beauty.  Some sweetness that draws us in
Until we are in so deep, all that is left is for us to declare
That this is the love which will last for ever,
Outliving any grain of sand or petal of a fading flower.

This love cuts out temptation.  Ends the pull of new desire,
Deletes that relentless ache for someone new.

We make promises quiet as silk slipping over moonlight.
We will love to the end of time, or, at the very least,
We hastily prevaricate, until the end of its own time.

We offer promises aloud, tying them up with a gold ring
Or two.  Often, two. Or with the ringpull of a thin tin can.
But gold or tin, nothing can lock up temptation.
Nothing stop that sudden surge of desire
For a tantalizing possibility inevitably leading to a sorry ending,
Or to a new and bitter beginning.

Nothing, that is, but love, which, as we fully understand,
Happens on the throw of a dice.

                                                        ©2020 Gwen Grant