Category: writing

PLENTY OF ROOM

The town was packed this morning, everyone enjoying the
sun, arms stretched across the back of the benches.  There are
some trees up near the market and, August or not, a leaf had fallen 
off one of them and lay right in front of me. 
So beautiful I had to write about it.  

PLENTY OF ROOM

Full of leaf
This world is.
Full of stem and stalk,
Leaf and tree.

Full of leaf.
Full of lazy snails
Creeping towards dinner.
Of whip-smart ants
Flying in flawless battalions.
Cogitating, debating,
Thinking hard thoughts
Of nipping and of biting.

This world is
Full of leaf.
Full of chlorophyll and colour,
Of green and brown,
Russet and yellow
Of white leaves and black.

Full of shape and little leaf veins,
Full of tiny tiny spiders
Weaving little tiny webs
All over the fallen leaves.

This world is
Full of leaf.
With plenty of room
For more.

                               ©2023 Gwen Grant.

LATE SUMMER

We live near a National Trust park but I knew it when I was a girl and it was just trees and
all the other lovely things in a familiar wood.  We go up a lot usually but we’ve not been
for some time  because of illness.  We’re gearing up to visit again but this poem
reminds me so much of that lovely place.   I remember standing in one particular spot
and starting to write this poem in my head.   


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. 

                                          © 2011 Gwen Grant

THIS IS WHAT THE MAN SAID

Malevich

THIS IS WHAT THE MAN SAID

Tonight, I heard a man say, firmly, and with absolute certainty
That, standing in a holy place, drowned by light and washed with colour,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

He said shafts of sunshine falling through tall windows
Had fallen on his shoulders; delicate green shadows
Catching his lively face, his tapping fingers.
When the sound of pipe and small drum began to practise living,
Lifting the silence, lifting the weight of emptiness,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

He dryly observed dust motes dancing, registered
How the clear, cold colour of great flowers
Delighting in fabulous vases, carried the tiny clutch of merry daisies
Resting in tin lids of water were carried with them.
Their wild and holy perfume, their tiny constant fragrance
Filling the candle-lit darkness.
Noting his feet, stone still and waiting, yet in their visiting,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven.
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

But was he who he thought he was?
Those feet his own feet or the feet of the restless soldier
Standing beside him.
Stone mouth wide open, dusty tongue
Ready to confirm with clarity and with vision,
He had caught a glimpse of heaven!
A glimpse of heaven!
Well, then!

   Well, then.

                                                ©2023 Gwen Grant

CIRCLING ROUND   

             CIRCLING ROUND                          

Sometimes lovers are surprised
By their own ardent fire,
Scorched by the ferocity of the flame
Blazing in them.
Until, flying too close to this new sun,
They are wrecked and wounded by rejection. 

But lovers wind the thin linen of consolation
Around a damaged heart.
Forgiving unfulfilled promises,
Waiting it out.
Sure the beloved will ease their pain,
Turn back to them. 

For this is the love they have waited for.
So no wound, mortal or easeful,
Will ever wrest it from them.
Nothing will stop their suffering,
For pain is part of love’s package,
And lovers drown in desire
Until desire destroys them. 

Lost love is a bad dream,
Rejected love, a nightmare.
Only when the ecstasy burns out,
The flame turns to ash, the fire to cinders,
And the old love done with,
Can a new and glorious passion begin. 

                                    © 2017 Gwen Grant

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