SHUFFLING THE STARS

We shuffle the stars
Out of their places
Whenever we need
A new world
To surround us.                

Filling the heavens
With so many stars,
We create
A canopy of silver,
In whose shining
We see our own reflections
Touched with glory. 

At last,
Becoming wholly 

    Distinctive individuals. 

                     © Gwen Grant

I love going away almost as much as I love coming back
and the new lines of a new place always interest me.
New York seemed to be all lines and I loved it.  Loved,
too, the unexpected and always welcome meetings with
people I didn’t know.

  LINES

The best lines are those
Drawn freehand.
Lines that sway and swerve,
Dip and curve,
And end
In huge flowers
Or a magician’s hat.

The worst lines are those
Drawn by ruler.
Horizontals,
Verticals,
Diagonals,
Which lie straight as a die
And end
In motorways,
Or, ‘Sorry.  No Exit!’

The most exciting lines are those
Drawn by travellers.
Lines that go
Straight
Around
The world,
And end
In meetings
Or new places.

                             ©GWEN GRANT   

    APPLE MORNING

 Early in the morning
When the mist comes rolling in from the fields,
And the queer little ghosties
Come riding and writhing within it,
Sometimes leaping the battered old fence,
Other times sneaking through the holes

In the lacy broken wood,
Crossing the garden like smoke,
Coming to rest under the apple tree,
It is then I see their long grey fingers
Reaching through the leaves,
Winding around the shining apples
As if to pluck them from the branch and eat them,
And by eating them, gain life.

But then the Autumn sun slides
Into the garden behind them,
Patting the twinkling shadows
Into tiny shapes of apple and leaf,
Weaving the winking apples into its sunny fingers,
Swallowing the mist and the little creeping ghosties,
Dusting those green, green apples with a flush of rosiness.

Neither pen, nor film, nor brush, nor quill
Can catch their utter loveliness.
No, all that can be done
Is to pick and hold and taste their glory,
Whilst the birds, the goats,
And the horse in the paddock
Who leans its head over the dead Philadelphus,
Over the tiny ghosties hiding in the dying flowers,
All hold back to await another apple morning. 

                                            © Gwen Grant

I love the sea, so I have always been very fond of this Norse myth of red monkeys under the ocean feeding iron bars to the serpent.  They did this because when the world was made it was too heavy, so the serpent was given the task of coiling around it to keep it together.  However,  the serpent would get hungry so the red monkeys were given the chore of feeding it iron bars to stop it uncoiling in search of food, as that would have been disastrous!

    SAIL AWAY TO NOWHERE

Little boat
On the horizon
Sailing away to nowhere

Rough winds
Send you skirling
Across impatient waters

Fiery suns
Smash colour rainbows
Into the roaring silence

Darkening skies
Threaten spiteful rain
To savage and to sink you

Under the ocean
Red monkeys feed iron bars
To the world’s serpent

Respect the serpent
Whose coils save the world
From abrupt and violent ending

Little boat, come home
Steer quietly into safe harbour
Where I am always waiting

To sail away to nowhere.

                          © Gwen Grant

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When I was a girl, the winters were ferocious.  The street I lived in was a small street with no more than about a half dozen houses down each side.  Every house, or so it seemed to me, had a polished table in their front room and over that table was a chenille cloth.  Our cloth was red with bobbles hanging all round it.  I only have to close my eyes to remember the thick rich feel of that cloth and I don’t have to do anything to remember my sister.

                       SPRING TO WINTER

              The world goes round in tight circles
              As I have always known it would.
              Its intention always to go
              From Spring to Winter
              In one breath.

              When I was first tall enough
              To see over the table top,
              The bobbled red chenille cloth
              Cherried in my fingers,
               I learnt then of dying,
              For in my house that winter
              Our Spring baby died.

             That snow pulsed afternoon,
             The old scissor-grinder, out-lighted,
             Stood under the gas lamp
             Stoning blades of knife and scythe and scissor,
             Sparks spinning from his wheel
             As if that winter day was Carnival.

             I ran from him,
            Snowflakes melting my eyes
            As I wept for my sister,
            Suddenly afraid of the scythe
            And afraid of the scissor.

                              © Gwen Grant