DANCING 

Marionnettes
Whirling in a jewel box
Feel no more at home
Than we do,
Standing,
Dreaming,
In this jewel box of a world. 

But we dance
To a different tune to them.
We dance
To melodies that are beaten
Into the earth.
To rhythms
That nourish coloured leaves
And unveil flowers
Scenting the air around us. 

Marionnettes
Jerk their little limbs
As they are ordered.
But denying bullet and bomb
Whatever victory they are seeking,
We dance,
Freelance.
Moving in the warmth and strength
Of an all absorbing love. 

                                    © Gwen Grant

LATE SUMMER 

Late summer now
And the little lost paths
Are dry and cindery under foot;
Dust and the early mist
Curling around the edges of the day. 

A leaf falls, as the trees
Shake their slow golden heads,
Filling the air with the sad sound
Of leaves falling, drifting, tumbling down.

Over the hedge, the stubbled fields
Sigh, and settle into waiting
For their dry stalks to be ploughed
Into the earth.
Lovely furrows then, stretching
Into the infinity of a much older vision. 

And Autumn dances in the woods,
Her red and orange skirts
Billowing around her twinkling feet.
Her red-berried head bobbing with excitement
As the time comes
When her beauty can be seen in the burning forest,
Her loveliness caught in the cobwebbed hedgerows,
In those tiny, sparkling shawls of light,
That wrap us about
With the fierce grace and beauty of love. 

                                          © Gwen Grant

 I wrote this poem many years ago and sold it to a national magazine. However, I didn’t know when it was being published but, one day, at a Railway station, at the start of a long journey, I bought  a copy of this magazine, opened it, and there was the poem! I spent the whole of that journey reading the print off the page.

      I KNOW YOUR FACE

I know your face as I know my own,
And yet, one odd glance
Surprised your outside face looking in
At me.
Odd.  I thought I knew you well,
Yet there you were.  A stranger.

So many years have gone by since we met
And loved by firelight.
I remember asking what you were thinking
about,
And listening.
Since then, it can’t be that I haven’t listened.
Just never asked again. 

                                              © Gwen Grant

This poem accompanied one of the paintings that went on exhibition at Southwell Minster.  I wrote a poem for each painting and it was so lovely to see them in that beautiful setting.  The area they were hung in was a shadowed place with  the cool grey stones and tall columns making it seem eternal.

LOVELY WINTER

Bitter winter, I exult in you.
You are my gift, my shroud, my winding sheet,
My creative death,
Pausing me in a frozen still-life
So that other life can break in,
Changing still-life to full life.

Lovely, lovely winter,
With all your subtle colour,
Your peerless blues and high violets flushing
the snow,
Your avalanche of lemon light and tender light
Whose sight
Makes me shake and shiver,
Shaking loose the hidden smoulder
Of scarlet tipped berries burning through darkness.
Those bonfires of memory reminding us
Of the steady scintillation of our hearts.
How I love your cold breath
Blowing me always into a new passion.

Blow, winter winds!
Blow your bitter chills until the sky dances,
The sea rages
And all the plump little mermaids
Leap to the surface of the holy water.
Mermaids who laugh at the scunning ships,
At the flag-sailed ships of myth and story,
Bringing us cargoes of dreams and coral and lost sea-horses,
All touched with glory.

Look! Look!
Look at the beauty of winter.
Look at the white peacocks flirting with the frosty hoar.
Look at the dark clouds racing darkly over the water
Towards the great-beaked swan
Who pecks gold from the tight-skeined air.

                                                            © Gwen Grant

 

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.

                                                       © Gwen Grant