OLD GLORY

             OLD GLORY

These tall old walls to faith
And shadows crowding empty doorways,
Windows open to the world,
Still have an aloof calm.
What can we, shimmers of starlight, get from them?

Cold stones and old glory.

                © 2020 Gwen Grant

WATER LILIES

                                          WATER LILIES 

Water glides along like the bodies
Of young women,
Lazily turning, sleepily drifting
Through the shallows and the deeps,
Weaving their lovely translucent limbs
Into oblivion.

When they awaken,
The world wakes with them,
Colour flooding the river bed
Where the long feathered strands
Of green weed
Curl around brown and silver bodies,
Turning them into flowers.

                 © 2020 Gwen Grant

BREAK UP

                      BREAK UP

This was the night when everything was broken,
When stars collided and fell into silent lonely gardens,
Into dark streets and lamplit highways,
Into houses with slammed doors and rooms full of emptiness,
Where shadows waited in perfect safety
For no-one was there to tread on them.

Outside, the yellow light from the tall street lamp
Threw gold over the green bushes and leaves,
Over the leaves dripping greenness into the darkness
And search as you might,
No spilt blood could be found on this ground,
Spilt only in the heart of the discontinued lover,
Who whispered and sighed,
Lamented and cried,
At how suddenly everything was lost and broken.

But all disconsolate lovers must pull themselves together,
Begin to consider how to mend that fractured heart,
So that a repaired lover may shine like one newly minted,
Who notices for the first time, how all the leaves
In the greeny darkness,
Are edged with gold.

                                        ©2020 Gwen Grant