For some years, I wrote a monthly poem for SOUTHWELL MINSTER magazine.  (Southwell Minster was built 1108-1300 and is very beautiful).  Amongst the other poems, I also wrote a series of ‘Miss McPherson and her class’ poems and really enjoyed writing them just as much, it seemed, as people enjoyed reading them.  ‘Harry’ in the poem below, appears in quite a few of the Miss McPherson poems and became a character I was very fond of.  But I was just as fond of the other children who appeared, always taking me by surprise with their very different natures.   Burton Lomax was initially a bit of an enigma.  Not so with Harry!  He roared into life and stayed there.

                    LOVE ONE ANOTHER?!

Harry said, ‘Please, Miss,
You know what Jesus told us
About loving one another
Like, you know, a sister or a brother?’

Miss McPherson said, ‘I do.’

‘Well,’ Harry went on, ‘I think
The Bible got it wrong.
It should have said,
Only love one another as long
As it isn’t Burton Lomax.
Because,’ Harry was unsteady,
‘If I saw a lion, Miss McPherson,
I’d point to that Burton Lomax person
And say, ‘There, lion, your lunch is ready.’

Chad stood up and said
He’d thought this ‘love’ thing through.
‘What Jesus meant,’ Chad said,
‘Was love one another when it’s good old Chad,
But not to bother, Harry, when it’s you.’

‘No! No!  No!’ Miss McPherson roared,
‘When Jesus said ‘Love one another as I love you,’
That, Chad, is exactly what He meant.
Even if that other person is not now,
Nor ever will be, Harry, anything like a friend.
For Jesus knew that if we love Him first
And love Him best,
To love one another, especially Burton Lomax,
Will be the one thing we really want to do.’

‘?!?’ Harry almost asked.
But, ‘?!?’ said Burton Lomax.
                                                          © GWEN GRANT

                 THIS CAT
Our cat sits on a wooden seat
And looks at me,
As I look at him.
What he sees is someone who feeds him,
Someone growing slower,
Shakier.
What I see is a cat as sweet as an apple,
As lovely as a snowflake
Or a feather.

When he moves, uncurls, twines around
As if his bones were made of water,
A great smooth engine purrs into life,
So that this cat,
If he wanted,
Could lift the world up on his paw,
Use it as a ball to play with.

Even when he grows old,
Slower,
Shakier,
His eyes blurred and filmed with age,
He will still be lovely.

Each time I see our cat,
I am thankful
For the generous hand of love.
                                                     ©Gwen Grant

 

 

We thought that we were stronger far
Than Old Man Time.
That hand-in-hand we could out-dance
The Lady of the Hours.
That every moment was forever
At our beck and call,
And we would be always young and lovely
As the Spring-time flowers.

We half understood when this one
Turned their face unto the wall,
When that one couldn’t get
A second breath.
But we were slow to understand
That Time is iron,
In its iron will to bring about
Our iron deaths.

Yet when all is said and done and told,
We ever understood that love turned
Iron into gold.
                               © Gwen Grant

 

 travelled down this road in northern Scotland at night and it was so wreathed in a heavy grey mist that when the road dipped down, we couldn’t even see the hedgerows. As we moved higher, however, the mist thinned out enough so that it looked like long folds of silk blowing across the fields. Then the moon appeared and the sky and the road looked just like this.

NIGHT ON A COUNTRY ROAD

There were six angels playing in the sky tonight,
Tossing stars to each other with easy grace,
Their long grey skirts whirling
Over the country road beneath them.

All was still.
All was silent.
All beauty just a memory

Until steady beams of light
Came shining down the darkness,
Startling the flowers into sudden radiance,
Chasing the twisty grey smokiness
Over the hedgerows,
As the lovely, familiar sound of a tractor
Came rolling through the air.

Then the whisper of grass
As a rabbit tracked through it,
The long, long sigh of an owl’s wings
And the hoarse, sweet growl of the tractor,
Rose up as a prayer.

                                          ©Gwen Grant

The dark red dahlias seem always to be the last flower to

give in to the onset of winter with their big shaggy heads and firm

stems and dark strong leaves, yet often when they have given up,

one small daisy appears, sometime even with pink tingeing their

tiny petals, as if in complete defiance of the frost.

YESTERDAY’S DREAMS

This garden is in retreat,
Dark red dahlias heralding the end.
Yesterday’s dreams already lying down
With their heads on the pillow. 

A hard frost killed the pale roses.

But this garden acknowledges no retreat,
Defiantly flowering one final daisy.
Today’s dreams already on their toes,
 Waiting to get a move on. 

                        ©2019 Gwen Grant