Category: Poetry

ELEMENTAL


ELEMENTAL

Close your eyes, dear darling.
Rest your head on earth’s bold shoulders.
Don’t cry.
Don’t turn away,
For this is our father and our mother.

What else comes before or after?
But the breaking of the dark,
The lighting of the candle
With the living flame of hope,
With the obstinate courage
Of the smallest flower
Growing in frozen earth,
Fierce and unyielding,
Flowering its tiny space
Among the rocks of a barren mountain.

Close your eyes, dear darling,
And gather all your strength.

                   © 2020 Gwen Grant

All material on this blog is copyright but if anyone wants to use part of it,
then please get in touch.   http://www.gwengrant.co.uk

THIS IS NOT A THEM AND US SITUATION

 

THIS IS NOT A THEM AND US SITUATION

The storm came blowing in,
Sending slow walkers
Scuttling for shelter,
Except the one who was lonely,
The one certain nobody cared.

‘Nonsense,’ hissed the rain.
‘Am I not here for you,
Pouring my silver water
Over your bony shoulders?’

Whilst the lightning,
Shaking her fiery hair,
Lit up the night sky
With hot lines of passion,
Celebrating the eternal union
Between them and us.

Now the lone walker,
Soaked to the skin,
Catches the raindrops in eager fingers,
Filling the sky with edgy laughter.

                                       © 2020 Gwen Grant

EPIPHANY

 

           EPIPHANY

Grey sunflowers, and poets
Sitting in old railway sidings
Alongside huge locomotives,
The clattering and banging
Of wrecked machinery
A perfect backdrop to a new world
In the making.

Kerouac and Ginsberg
Loving the whole, the tiniest bit of it.
Ginsberg breathing in grey sunflowers,
Remembering them for all those coming after.

Imprinting them on the fabric
Of that new world
Waiting just around the corner.

                             © 2020 Gwen Grant

All material on this blog is copyright but if anyone wants to use part of it,
then please get in touch.   http://www.gwengrant.co.uk

WAITING

 

      WAITING

Silent fields, and a bitter night,
And us, trying to keep warm
Under a frozen sky,
The air so cold, a tap
Would shatter it into shards of darkness
To fall around our feet,
And in that star-lit, owl frozen silence,
The hushed dark call carried thinly
Across the still and sleeping fields.

We, so quiet, the red-gold shadow
Of a fox padded by us
All unaware of our waiting,
Its paw pressing the frosted grass
Into dark and hungry prints
Along the path.

Then the silence was broken
By the soft whisper of wind
Drifting snowflakes down the feathered sky,
To quilt the winter ground,
And, somewhere, in that bitter icy world
Someone offered a word of hope
To someone else.

As long as hope is in the world, then,
We, cold and frozen in our waiting,
Can warm ourselves at the fire of love.

                                                      © 2018 Gwen Grant