This has been a difficult summer and now I’m just emerging from
a severe bout with toothache, ending in the tooth being taken out.
There were horses everywhere in those days . A riding
school in the village often brings lovely horses past the house but
these horses don’t stop to pass the time of day. They’re working.

GALLOPING HORSES

That old broken chair
Of horsehair and shiny brown leather,
With splits in the cushions
No amount of polishing could ever repair,
Was kept so long it finally fell apart.

Clumps of wiry brown hair
Tumbling onto the green carpet.
Conjuring up quiet stables full of moonlight,
Restless horses longing to canter
On the grass in the back garden,
If that was all there was on offer.

I dreamt of glowing horses
Offered long orange carrots and ripped green apples.
Big, gentle mouths fastidiously accepting
These small fragments,
As they galloped out of my dreams
Into a world settled on all sides with houses,
Little black spaniels and friendly cats.
But I had a horse and wanted for nothing.

We had hours and hours of being together,
Racing over meadows, trotting over sand,
As that remembered brown leather became a saddle
Which, somehow, I knew how to handle,
The sound of the sea splashing all around us.

That was the way it always was
As we danced together,
On that crumpled old chair of shining brown leather.

©2024 Gwen Grant

I wrote this poem many years ago but can still remember the chair I sat in
to write it, the particular writing pad I had and the certain type of pen I
used.  It carries a lot of memories of people and times long gone.

   THE GRACE OF LOVE

Tenderly, let memory slide
From you to me
And me to you.
Gently, let time’s long tide
Wash over me
And over you.
From what remembered things
Are left behind,
From light to dark
We’ll pick and choose and find,
And use the whole
To heal and bind,
You to me
And me to you.

            © 1970 Gwen Grant

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

greenpeace

Homes! Winter on the horizon and every thing living needs
a warm and safe home.

NO SECOND HOMES

Whiteness
Blinding the eyes,
Snow and long ice
Holding the cold
Within them,
For when it is needed.

Fabulous bears,
Light as feathers
In the water,
Floating.
Pulling out and up
Onto the ice.

No second homes
To be built here.
Only igloos and ice caves
Where penguins
Could pop in for a chat
And baby bears
Knock on doors,
Asking for a cheese sandwich.

Or why not float away
On an ice floe.
Go for a holiday to Haiti,
Where ghosts and spirits
Economise in trees,
Dropping on passing shoulders
For company.
Something to be thought about.

One home each
Is now the world order.
Any left over to be given
To the homeless.
Who are everywhere.

©2024 Gwen Grant

 Where we lived when I was a girl, most of the gardens
around us were like my Dad’s. Full of vegetables, fruit,
flowers and hens. They were beautiful gardens and I
remember our garden with great fondness.

This poem has already been published but I’ve been thinking
about my family quite a lot lately, especially my Dad, so here is
a poem I wrote about him and his garden.  I only have to
picture the garden in my head and it’s there, always in sunshine and
with the hens darting about, hiding wherever they can.   Gardens 
are priceless for what they bring to us.

LITTLE BROWN HENS AND RED

My father’s garden was full of little brown hens
High stepping, tippy tapping in and out of the daffodils,
Pecking at the Spring mint, settling in the potato patch,
Always protesting, always complaining.
Not enough of this.  Too little of that.
The wicked tortoiseshell cat pinning them down
With eyes greener than the very grass they trod on.

They would crowd around the kitchen door,
Indignant little bodies demanding hen justice.
But they liked their bit of my father’s garden
With worms trying to live quietly beneath them.

Until my cousin came with his hard hands,
Hungry eyes and a heart intent on killing,
Then I went out shouting,
Scattering the little brown hens and the red,
Causing the dark cockerel
To turn his bitter, livid eye on my hateful presence.

Squawking, they fled, hiding under the hen coop.
Darting into the rhubarb leaves at the back of the tree.
But when my cousin kept coming, when his boots broke
The sunny daffodils, I pushed him so hard, he fell over,
I didn’t care about him.

For my little red hens and brown,
The arrogant cockerel with his angry eyes
All lived to tuck themselves up again
And sleep their tiny pulsing sleep.

To wake in the morning,
Ready for another really interesting day. 

                                          ©2020 Gwen Grant