Category: Poetry

POACHER’S MOON

One of my favourite things is walking.  I used to walk a lot at night,
loving the darkness  and the way the world changed in the fields
and hedgerows, the way the flowers stood out like small moons. 
This was an encounter with a poacher.  They were such silent and
still men, stiller even than the trees and when they heard anyone
coming, it was as if they turned to wood themselves, frightening you
out of your wits when you spotted them.

      POACHER’S MOON

That night, when I was out,
Walking the frozen fields,
He was the only stranger,
The Poacher.
Standing still as a death stone
Under the oak tree,
Switching on his head lamp
Only when I was past.

Blinding me and the rabbit,
Blinding me and the hare.

And I wondered if this was the time
Me and the pheasant,
The rabbit and the fox
Would all lie down together,
All freeze and die together
In the white and frosted furrows,
To lie there forever.
For ever and for ever.

For I had seen the Poacher,
By dint of old and wicked country magic
Of Deadly Nightshade and Henbane,
Leap into the sky above us.
His head lamp shining away
Every shadow that would save us.

Until I looked again and saw
The Poacher’s moon. 

                                         ©2019 Gwen Grant

THOSE WRITERS!

THOSE WRITERS!

Writers are always certain
Those they write about
Don’t know what has been done to them,
Don’t know and wouldn’t care
If they did.

The writers are wrong.

Those captured people,
Old ghosts returned,
Some happy, some furious,
Have a deadly understanding
Of what the writer is about.

Lifting their voices in complaint,
Shaking writers’ cold shoulders,
Awakening them from stolen dreams
When they should have been sleeping,
‘Leave the dreams alone, pal,’
They know.  And one day
They are going to come back
To haunt them.

Serve those writers right!
Capturing people’s souls without permission.
Caught for ever in a remorseless
Circle of bad and good.
Caught for ever in a circle of helpless love.

                                 ©2021 Gwen Grant.
PRIVATE KEEP OUT!  by Gwen Grant
published by Penguin Vintage  Children’s Classics
available in paperback and as ebook

TAKE A LEAF

One of the flowers I loved when I was a child was the Buttercup.
There was a meadow where we played which was bright yellow
in places with buttercups. This flower often faced a lot of
opposition but it somehow always managed to bloom. In what
seemed to me to be the foreign country of Kent where I was sent
for a year to get well, there were plenty of buttercups to remind
me of home..

TAKE A LEAF

What we see
In any flower,
Is a determination
That come what may,
Nothing will stop them
Blossoming
In Spring.

Even if they
Have to create
Their own Spring
To blossom in.

©2025 GWEN GRANT

THE MOAT IN WINTER

The Moat by John Nash…exhibited in The Tate

No country walks right now. It’s much too hot. But
remembering John Nash’s glorious picture of a moat
in the frosty silence of winter, I ransacked my bookshelves
to find a copy of it. Hurry up cooler weather so we can
start our walks again and take time to look at everything.
Trouble with looking at books is that you never know when
to stop and before you know where you are, there’s a pile
of wonderful pictures in front of you, all waiting for their
tiny moment of glory.

THE MOAT IN WINTER

I never saw the moat
Like that before.
The clear grey water
Holding tight the lovely ghost
Of Winter Thorn.
The thin branched Birch
Pushing aside the sky,
That the grey moat paths
May, as usual, lead the fox
Into the dark fields sulking.

Now, whenever I look
Into that still water,
Whether Spring breezes play
Cat and mouse with the sparkling
Drops of living silver,
Or summer leaves stipple
The calm brown surface,
That spare and beautiful image of winter
Will always be with me,
Always be in my watchful eyes.

                     ©2021 Gwen Grant.

THE CORNFIELDS AT PRAYER


From my bedroom window, I can see stretches of corn fields and walking on the paths alongside these fields, I can always hear the corn fields whispering.  These whispers sound so private and yet because the sound fills the air, they also seem meant for everyone who is there to listen.

That particular night, which was cool and quiet, leaning on the windowsill, with the yellow moon picking up the gold of the corn, took me back to when I was a girl, helping with the harvest, remembering how those thin golden spears prickled when they came into contact with skin. There was an enchantment there then and it’s still there now.

As I stood there, I thought of cornfields and other fields of grain growing all over the world and it seemed to me that these fields with their precious harvests were as involved with the world as we are.  If that was the case, then, for the first time, I knew that the corn was whispering its love and hope and concern for the world, exactly as we do ourselves.

      THE CORNFIELDS AT PRAYER

So the long cool night begins
And through the quiet darkness
I thought I heard the corn stalks talk
Of all the whispered night-time prayers
Drifting over the fields,
Setting the corn to its own prayer whispering.

Then I heard the corn stalks talk
Of all the little living prayers.
The lovely hares leaping
And the small creatures seeking
The bread of life in the earth beneath them,
And quiet lovers walking the poppied grasses,
Breathing promises and prayers
Into the listening darkness.

I know I heard the corn stalks talk
Of the old traditions of hay-making and stooking,
Of sowing and reaping,
Of the laughter of bare armed innocents driven 
to distraction
By those thin shining spears prickling and stippling,
Until they almost longed to leave
The praying cornfields whispering.

I expect, though, that the corn stalks talk
Of different things
On the bleak plains of grief, for instance,
Or on the long shades of despair,
Taking for their own the bone bare prayer
Of the suffering heart bleeding into the suffering air.
All is loss and lamentation,
Until they sing of a strong and eternal love
That is forever sowing and forever reaping
Love at the beginning and love at the ending.
So the prayers of the world are heard
In the whispering cornfields prayer.

© 2018 Gwen Grant