Good Friday 30^th March 2018

                            GOOD FRIDAY

 So now it begins with the sun striking through the tall windows,
Onto the old brown pews and onto the pulpit,
Onto the slender Cross where the weight of this weeping world
Is carried on helpless shoulders,
Onto the crown of thorns blazing in the shadows,
Burning the darkness with its crimson glory.

 This is not a gentle day, yet gentleness persists in breaking through,
For the soaring arc of the wide blue banner
Painted on the far wall of the Chapel,
Painted high above the polished table where blue scented grasses
Quiver in a silver goblet, unquestioning and faithful,
Presents to us those golden words painted on that lovely blue arc,
Words that insist ‘God Is Love’
Which gently insist it is this we must always remember. 

The singing is bright now, pausing, darkening, lifting, soaring,
Until a sudden startling descant adds its own touch of glory
To all tough and tender hearts caught in a flesh
Ever subject to death and to corruption, yet ever open to joy.
These singers of sacred songs seek the strength of God as they sing
And in those three plain words, God Is Love, find it. 

Then the crisp cold air smelling faintly of lavender
Drifts like a prayer into the silence and the silence is profound
As silence always is when God is listening.
And God is always listening.
And love is always sending its quiet hope out into the world. 

                                                                              © GWEN GRANT.

         A SLOW SHINE OF CELANDINE

It was on a day that held winter tightly to its bones,
When the whole world was frozen over,
That thin sunshine shone through that bony wood,
Lighting the little trembling ferns
Trembling in the bitter wind,
Gilding the sheath of the bony Birch
Until it shone like silver,
A light to glint and gleam in the new-lit darkness,
To remind us that through the dark times,
In older bones and in the bones of fragile children,
Love has always shone and gleamed and glinted.
Always bringing light to a dark world,
Always bringing love to overcome unimaginably dark forces.

In the dead leaves, in the dark moss,
In the narrow twisted roots of bony trees,
In the slow shine of tiny, tiny celandines all golden and tender,
Beaming beneath the darker and darker leaves,
Their golden heads lifting to the sun,
In the small green buds hidden in their papery sheaths,
Their slow explosions seeking eager life.
Into all this, the ringing of the shuttered bluebells
Send their silent, startling promise that love’s new life
Will always shine into the bony darkness,
Will always defeat it with its full and living sweetness.
                                             © Gwen Grant                                         

 

DANGEROUS HARBOUR

As we stand here,
On the edge of the world,
The wet streets peeling away
From the tiny harbour,
The sea, in a fit of spite,
Swirls and tumbles
Onto the stony shingle,
Rattling the shells
From one bony ridge to another,
Hissing its peevish laughter
At the moonbeams dancing uneasily
Down this stretch of wild water.

Until, in a fury of authority,
The moon calls all to order.
Combing the white frilled water
Into its thin silver fingers,
Braiding light into the aching darkness,
Its own face darkening as it considers
The water’s bold and fierce behaviour.

Now look what’s happened!
The moon has turned her back
On the tiny, frozen harbour,
Battered by the shell hung water,
Smashing foam flowers
Onto the old stone causeway,
Onto our icy, hasty shoulders,
As we run helter-skelter for safety
To a deep and far away doorway.

Now the sly and sliding waters
Try to tumble us off our frozen feet,
Try and pull us into the rolling sea
To be another bony shell in the making.

                                   © Gwen Grant

 

        

       STOP

Every child
Should be able to grow up
Without a gun
Shooting at them.

Every child
Should be able to grow up
Without a bomb
Dropping on their head
Making them dead.

Every child
Belongs to love,
So let us join heart to heart
And love them.

                    © Gwen Grant

It has been very cold here, lately, and the two cats that
are around the fields and the garden, one our marmalade
cat and one his sworn enemy, the black cat, are so lithe
and graceful in their hunting, that I often stop to watch them.
The black cat is a stray which we feed and have put him a
bed in the greenhouse.  Our cat is so jealous, he will stand
guard over the food put out for the black cat until he’s called
They both try hard but are never within sight of catching a
bird.  If our cat brings in one of the little brown field mice, he
always drops it and then, with it being so small, we have to find it.
Not easy.  The last one hid in the round opening for the hoover hose
and took us hours to find.   Let out into the garden, these tiny
mice vanish in an instant down the sides of the path where they all
seem to live.

                            EARLY CATS

If you walk the long grass in the morning
When it’s white with frost
And grey with the visiting clouds,
You see the cats.
They stalk the robin and the doves
Come from a nearby garden.

Those snake quiet cats
Slither through their silent world,
To spring from the stickle grass
With a startling coloured grace.
Those cats!

They go hungry this morning
Because a thin black twig
Fell from a wintered tree,
Frightening the red chested robin
And the gentle doves.

And those quick cats,
Those early morning hunters,
Wailed their anger to the fading moon.

                                   © Gwen Grant