THE FIRST DAISY
Sunshine,
Threading through the garden,
Touching each blade of grass.
Turning the first daisy
Into a little pulse of light,
Staying just out of reach
Of the cat’s lazy paw.
Until it pounces,
Catching the sun
In its sharp white claws,
Turning it into a net of glory.
©2025 GWEN GRANT
Not harvest time, no, but the fields and woods and hedgerows are
full of the promise of lovely things here already or yet to come.
Whatever, these glorious harvests have their beginnings here.
HARVEST AND THE SCHOLAR
Now is the time of the dreaming harvest,
When love walks the quiet garden,
Resting under the apple tree and blessing
All the little miracles.
Blessing the black berry, dark as night and beautiful.
Blessing the hips and haws, their tiny tongues of fire,
Startling crimson, burning red in the tight green hedgerows.
Blessing the fat yellow apples, ripe upon the tree,
Yellow as the mid-day sun rising.
The scholar sits in front of love, frayed to the bone with living,
Flayed to the soul with loss and longing,
Lamenting lost harvests when all the years were deserts,
All the days were dust, and the wintered wood of lost hopes trembling,
Made the heart a place where harvest was never going to happen.
Yet love murmured only of love.
Blessing the scholar; blessing this, the fathomless miracle.
Murmuring of tiny joys that once had starred the deserts,
Murmuring of love and small horns of plenty
That once had sprung from the dust of sightless days,
Unseen. Unknown. Forgotten.
‘Remember,’ breathed love. ‘Remember.’
And, remembering, the scholar took from the hand of love
The wintered wood, now bright with fruit and leaf and blossom,
Bright now with hope and love and passion,
Thanks giving for this living harvest safely gathered in.
© 2016 Gwen Grant
I wrote this companion poem to GOOD FRIDAY.
Full of leaf
The world is.
Full of stem and stalk,
Leaf and tree.
Full of apple blossom,
Yellow dandelions and tiny filaments
Blowing everywhere.
Full of lazy snails
Creeping towards dinner.
Full of moths fluttering
Away from hot lights,
Avoiding lit-up candles.
Full of whip-smart ants
Cogitating, thinking hard thoughts
Of nipping and biting,
Of hurting and marking,
Of green leaf cutting.
Full of colour
The world is.
Full of chlorophyll,
Shape and little leaf veins.
Full of silver lines shining.
Where lazy snails danced
As ants devoured a green apple fallen.
Full of leaf,
The world is.
Full of stem and stalk,
Leaf and tree.
Full of spiders.
Tiny, tiny spiders
Weaving tiny, tiny webs
To wrap around cold and frightened shoulders,
To catch apple blossom falling,
To start this lovely world with Love,
All over again.
©2025 Gwen Grant
This is a day that always has an echo in my heart. I’ve published
this poem before but my memories of Good Friday are so
vivid and loved, the Chapels, the people, the singing, the glorious
words that relate its sombre story always there to hold me, seem
eternally new.
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.
© 2018 GWEN GRANT.
The birds are very busy just now and they zip past our windows on their ever hasty
way but every now and again, one of these lovely creatures lands at the bottom of
our garden and we get to see the heron in all its archaic wonder and grace. They are so
totally beautiful that, as we used to say, their utter loveliness completely
knocks your socks off.
THAT OLD DINOSAUR BIRD
That old dinosaur bird came galumphing down the river
Like an aeroplane on its last legs,
Whose engine is bumping and jumping
Through the twilit air.
Not the most graceful bird,
But incredibly beautiful in a Picasso’ish kind of way,
And Picasso would be thrilled to paint him
If he had his time again,
And make of that heron
A rapturously lovely, joyful,
Sort of dazzling cubist display.
Uh oh, there he goes again!
Crashing down so close to the water
He could dip his long archaic beak
Into the river and spear a fish.
Or seize that crouching ginger cat watching him
And flip it into the trees for the fun of it.
‘SPLASH’ he goes, and the whole river shudders,
Other birds whistle and shake their heads,
‘Dinosaur bird,’ you can almost hear them say,
‘When are you ever going to learn to land
In a proper, elegant, bird-of-flight’ish sort of way?’
But that bony bird doesn’t care.
He just flaps away.
© 2018 GWEN GRANT
Poems by Gwen Grant 