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?

THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE

  

THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE

History is like a shed
We can shelter in
When present life is tough,
And the future
Doesn’t look up to much, either.

Mathematics is like a shed
We can shelter in
When nothing in our life adds up,
And the sum of love
Equals a big fat nothing

Hope is like a shed
We can shelter in,
For Hope is always at home
With the kettle on.
This is a good shed to live in.

The mathematics of love
Are always the same.
Love plus love equals love,
Until the sum of love adds up
To hope for us all.

Children first.

                               © 2017 Gwen Grant

THE PROPHET AT MY ELBOW

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

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.

PEA PODS AND PROMISES

PEA PODS AND PROMISES

Pea pods and pea straws
And fields of green oceans
As far as the eye can see,
And busy little children
Building pea-straw houses
Or getting lost in the green fields
As their mothers pull peas.

They were all told
To keep away from the small river
Where the Kingfisher flew,
Enchanting those who saw
The blue blur, blue on blue.
Tempting one child or another
To slide into the water.

Languorous now, the afternoon wears on,
The sun emptying those green oceans,
The red tractor silent
As little children are found and woken.
Bags weighed,
Coins counted one by one
Into green-dirty hands,
Ready for the waiting corner-shop man.

Time to climb onto the lorry.
Time to go home.

Everything will have changed
In the year that is yet to come,
But the fields will still be full
Of quiet green oceans bringing hope
Of a new harvest.

                                   © 2020 Gwen Grant