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 SCENT OF CLOVES.

This was my father’s garden, too many years ago to count and yet, the memory of it is as sharp as if I had seen it yesterday.  My father loved carnations.  Carnations and chrysanthemums, the great, shaggy headed, curled-over petalled flowers, which were almost glints of architecture in amongst the more gentle flowers.

      THE SCENT OF CLOVES

The garden was full of carnations
Standing in elegant rows like delicate soldiers,
Or curling up together
In friendly circles,
Their silvery green leaves
Supporting each other.

That spicy sharpness of cloves,
That remembered scent of carnations
Filled the air,
Making me dream of other lives
Lived by fabulous people,
Which, one day, I would discover for myself.

But I never did.
For my own life elbowed those dreams
Out of the way
And gave me carnations.

                                      ©2019 Gwen Grant

FEATHERS

           FEATHERS   

Fire is a red feather
Drifted from that hungry old bird,
The sun.
Whose voracious appetite
Devours the world,
Yet whom we keep feeding.

The sun is a yellow feather
Drifted into that pale bird
Of day,
Always nesting in the darkness,
But which is now considering
New quarters in a cave.

Hope is a feather of any colour,
That has, from time to time,
Thought Prometheus a fool.
Yet, hope still shines through
The searing light and inky darkness
That reveals all.
Way too much, in fact,
For any chance of happiness.
But this feather is certain
That love will defeat the lot of them.

                    © 2019 Gwen Grant

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    

THIS CIRCUS HAS NEVER REALLY WORKED, HAS IT?

 

THIS CIRCUS HAS NEVER REALLY WORKED, HAS IT?         

She never wanted to be in this circus,
Yet, here she is, a bareback rider.
Others riding her to despair, to tragedy
Always waiting in the wings.
Wake up, folks!  Look what’s happening.

He never wanted to be a trapeze artiste,
Yet, here he is, leaping from one hand to another.
Knowing he’s going to miss.
Knowing he’ll fall and crack his head wide open.

These clowns! 
Forever tumbling over, forever falling down,
Getting up again problematic
When you’re already tagged a failure.
Oh, get a grip.

Trailing clouds of glory?
Well, our glory was long gone
By the time we hit the spotlight.
Only storm clouds and bad weather
Showed up for us.

This circus operates in the dark,
Performers lit only by a flash of light,
To count lost years by,
To add up lost chances,
To see the end of a sharp needle.

This circus needs closing down,
Then no-one can ever get back in,
Not even with a ticket.
                                  ©  2019   Gwen Grant
                         

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.