This poem accompanied one of the paintings that went on exhibition at Southwell Minster.  I wrote a poem for each painting and it was so lovely to see them in that beautiful setting.  The area they were hung in was a shadowed place with  the cool grey stones and tall columns making it seem eternal.

LOVELY WINTER

Bitter winter, I exult in you.
You are my gift, my shroud, my winding sheet,
My creative death,
Pausing me in a frozen still-life
So that other life can break in,
Changing still-life to full life.

Lovely, lovely winter,
With all your subtle colour,
Your peerless blues and high violets flushing
the snow,
Your avalanche of lemon light and tender light
Whose sight
Makes me shake and shiver,
Shaking loose the hidden smoulder
Of scarlet tipped berries burning through darkness.
Those bonfires of memory reminding us
Of the steady scintillation of our hearts.
How I love your cold breath
Blowing me always into a new passion.

Blow, winter winds!
Blow your bitter chills until the sky dances,
The sea rages
And all the plump little mermaids
Leap to the surface of the holy water.
Mermaids who laugh at the scunning ships,
At the flag-sailed ships of myth and story,
Bringing us cargoes of dreams and coral and lost sea-horses,
All touched with glory.

Look! Look!
Look at the beauty of winter.
Look at the white peacocks flirting with the frosty hoar.
Look at the dark clouds racing darkly over the water
Towards the great-beaked swan
Who pecks gold from the tight-skeined air.

                                                            © Gwen Grant

 

We have a national park close to us which is a thing of beauty and which contains such loveliness, you have to make yourself go home.  The park is on old ground and standing on it, there is that eternal feeling of all that has gone before and all that will come in the future.  This park seems to include the sky as part of its sheer loveliness.    

          THE PROPHET AT MY ELBOW

Early Winter, and the geese are sailing
In a long straight line down the river,
Not knowing where they are going
But going, anyway,
Turning at the curve then coming back.
By their side, the wind is puffing up
Little drops of sunny water.

And as if the prophet was standing by me,
I became aware of the immense blue vault of the heavens.
Through the light of day, saw the hidden night,
With one star blazing brighter than all the others.

My feet were firm on solid ground,
Yet beneath them, I saw mountains biding their time,
Deserts flowering, and lights of cities not yet built all shining,
And the prophet, standing at my elbow, whispered,
‘Here is loveliness beyond all telling.’

Mid-winter, and the geese are sailing
In a long straight line down the river.
Their angry little eyes a snapping song of reluctant praise
To the love that made them.
And the prophet, standing at my elbow, whispered
Of the steadfast love and hope that lives in all creation.

                                                       © Gwen Grant

I saw this hat in a shop and tried it on.  It instantly looked as if the hat was wearing me instead of the other way round, reminding me of the fateful time I once had a hat that was attacked by a small dog, who wouldn’t let it go until it was sure it had killed it.  I still see versions of the hat in the poem and inevitably try them on with the same result.  I really wish I could wear that hat instead of that hat wearing me.

               THE HAT

This hat demands
Someone with a strong personality
To stand under its brim.
Someone who always walks
Down the middle of the pavement.
Who only ever patronises
High class establishments
Selling hats of good breeding.

This hat wants someone
Who always carries an umbrella.
Who never ducks into the nearest Pub
For strong drink and a bag of crisps
To sustain them, and who would never
Hang this hat on the back of a chair
To be attacked by a small Pomeranian.

After that, this hat felt so ill-used and abused
It demanded a new owner.

Very well!  If you insist!
But you just wait and see.
You’ll not get very far without me.

Obviously, the hat shrugged its brim,
Clearly didn’t believe a thing I had to say.
Calmly murmured that from here on in,
It would make its own way.
The last I saw of that very superior hat,
It was waltzing out of the door
On a very superior head.

Hmmm.  Pure luck of the draw, I said.

                                   © Gwen Grant

 

BITTER FROST TO SUNSHINE

All these years, we have lived
With lies as light as thistledown
In our minds.
Memories of those times
We broke with love
Bringing a sad remembrance.
Turning sunshine to frost
In an instant.

These are the memories
We want to polish up.
The ones that make us sad,
Uncomfortable, uneasy.
Make them more forgiving,
Sweeter, perhaps,
As if they had never happened
In the way we remember.

But we know enough to understand
No good ever came
Of turning memories into lies,
No matter how much
We may want to lie or be lied to.

In that dark time, then,
When we can no longer find
Forgiveness in ourselves,
When thistledown lies
Weigh heavy upon us,
Offer them up.

Offer up those memories,
Just as they are.
Offer up those times
We have not loved.
Offer them all up,
Trusting and safe in our trust
That Love itself
Will take each sorry heart,
Turn bitter frost to sunshine.

                                   © Gwen Grant

PRESENT ETERNITY

If she had to cut her coat
According to her cloth,
The old girl knew
It was going to be a damn thin coat,
Nowhere near thick enough
To keep out the cold.

Glancing into a passing shop window,
She felt absolutely fed-up,
For the coat she had been wearing
For all of her present eternity
Was thin, too, and wrinkled,
Needing an iron.

But, sighing, she knew she would
Patch it up a few more times
Before she was ready to change it.

                                         © Gwen Grant