LIVE THE MOMENT

When I was a child, there was an Apothecary’s shop in our town.
Walking in there was walking into a different world and I was
always surprised to come out and find the ordinary, familiar street
waiting just where I had left it. 

        LIVE THE MOMENT

So much of yesterday has gone into today
That even as dawn lifts the darkness
We are left behind, caught in the past,
Half looking for a way out,
Half longing to stay where we are.

Memories, brightened with a spit and polish
To smarten them up,
Clear away time’s dust that we may see them fully.
As if we ever could.

Our minds are apothecary’s chests,
Full of deep drawers marked in neat Latin print,
Happiness.  Joy.  Regret.  Grief.  Sorrow.
Where in the deepest drawer of all,
The one that runs right along the top,
Is love, that let’s yesterday fade away
And today take over.

                           ©2020 Gwen Grant.

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THIS CAT

We’ve always had cats in our house.  The first one was jet black and
ruled our Keeshond puppy with a paw of iron.  The dog used to wriggle
past the kitten, too afraid to stand up and walk. Our present cat is
quite old now yet can still leap up onto the fence as if the height
is nothing.  It’s magical to watch.  This cat has given us so much
pleasure with his beauty and grace, that I wrote this poem in his praise.

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.

                            © 2017 Gwen Grant

LATE SUMMER


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

THOSE BATS!

 













THOSE BATS!

One second beyond twilight
And the bats are out again.

I wish I could rhapsodize
Over their velvety wings,
Their amazing structure,
Not to mention their tiny sharp eyes
Like chips of quartz
Shining in the light.
But I can’t.

And if they really are more scared of me
Than I am of them,
Why is it only me flying
Down the garden path,
Slamming and locking
The back door behind me?

And why can I hear bat laughter
Right through the night
Until early in the morning?

                    ©2020 Gwen Grant

CHILDREN WALKING

When I was ten and very poorly, I was sent to a kind of hospital school three
hundred miles away from my home to get better.  I felt so lost, unhappy and
alone, I ran away on a night thick with snow, determined to get back home.
I’d read all the stories of children on their own – Hansel and Gretel, Snow
White, the children in the Bible constantly on the move and they consoled
me.  But here we are, decades later, and like the children in the stories I
told myself all those years ago, they are still being pursued by the inhumanly
vicious.   When will it end?

   CHILDREN WALKING

That night, in wicked December,
When the moon shone
Through the dark tops of trees
Onto the sparkling snow.
The sea rolling over the silent sand,
The water so cold and slow
Even Neptune was frozen,
Frightened by the frost hardened foam. 

That was the night she began
The three hundred mile walk home.
Sure it would take no time at all. 

She was sick of the great old house
In dark shadow behind her,
With its white beds, white walls
And fierce purple uniforms.
She wanted to sleep in her own bed,
With the candle on the window sill,
Unlit, but ready for any emergency.
A bad dream.  The eerie sound
Of a bogeyman almost upon her. 

As she walked, she remembered
All the stories she had heard
Of children walking.
Walking back to their own home,
Looking for a new one.
Some together.   Some like her, alone.
Walking through flame and fire and snow,
Through desolation. 

She didn’t get home that night,
Neither did they.
Even Neptune almost didn’t make it.
But they remember,
Those children walking alongside each other,
That night in wicked December. 

And still they walk,
Told in new stories of new suffering,
New desolation,
Of new bogeymen now upon them,
Told in the old story of the breakdown of love.  

                                © 2020 Gwen Grant