We travelled down this road in northern Scotland at night and it was so wreathed in a heavy grey mist that when the road dipped down, we couldn’t even see the hedgerows. As we moved higher, however, the mist thinned out  enough so that it looked like long folds of silk blowing across the fields. Then the moon appeared and the sky and the road looked just like this.

NIGHT ON A COUNTRY ROAD

There were six angels playing in the sky tonight,
Tossing stars to each other with easy grace,
Their long grey skirts whirling
Over the country road beneath them.

All was still.
All was silent.
All beauty just a memory

Until steady beams of light
Came shining down the darkness,
Startling the flowers into sudden radiance,
Chasing the twisty grey smokiness
Over the hedgerows,
As the lovely, familiar sound of a tractor
Came rolling through the air.

Then the whisper of grass
As a rabbit tracked through it,
The long, long sigh of an owl’s wings
And the hoarse, sweet growl of the tractor,
Rose up as a prayer.

                                                                 ©Gwen Grant

I wrote this poem some years ago but can still remember the  chair I sat in to write it, the particular writing pad I had and the certain type of pen I used. It carries a lot of memories of people and  times long gone.

THE GRACE OF LOVE

Tenderly, let memory slide
From you to me
And me to you.
Gently, let time’s long tide
Wash over me
And over you.
From what remembered things
Are left behind,
From light and dark
We’ll pick and choose and find,
And use the whole
To heal and bind,
You to me
And me to you

                 © Gwen Grant

Wallflower Rock And Roll

Buying roses and chrysanthemums
From the woman in the market,
I ask if there are wallflowers,
This morning up for sale.
Wallflowers! says she.   Why, there are bunches
In a box lying just around the corner,
Small and compact plants, to make a garden sing.
But there are no long and leggy gilly-flowers
With their scented velvet petals,
In reds and yellows, oranges, and crimsons dark as blood,
For no-one wants this lady.  No-one wants to take her.
She has to flower and blossom in the shadows on her own.

We were standing down along
From the old and ravaged dance hall
That used to be our golden home in all those years gone by
When quick as a curve in time,
The dance hall years sprang out at me.
With throb of drum and splintered, icy, glitter of guitar,
A fevered trumpet singing silk; the sax’s cool desires,
Then harsh and sweet the singer sang,
And so the dance raged on and on.
Rock!  Rock!  Rock!
Until the street began to swing,
With fast ecstatic dancers in fast ecstatic dance.

No wallflowers in that dance hall, no little flower alone,
For short and compact, long and leggy,
They’re out there dancing on their own.
Rolling with the rest of them, rocking with the best of them,
The swirling, whirling girls with their flaring, sexy petticoats,
On their moving, grooving heels so high; stiletto thin,
They can balance on a silver coin,
Rocking angels dancing, on the head of any pin.
Hot rock with grace, with love and passion,
For though they think they own the dance,
They know the dance owns them.

No wallflower lad stands all alone,
As Princely in his thick soled,
Suede, and mighty brothel creepers,
Cool and smooth in bootlace tie and Lamming gown,
With Tony Curtis curl of hair slickly curling down.
Young lions they stand, fierce, on the prowl,
Aloof and fabulous in their time,
Until the music bolds their blood,
Guitar and trumpet, sax and drum,
When flesh and skin and bone give in,
To make the dance hall sway and swing
To flirty, dirty, rock and roll.
ROCK ON! 

                                       ©Gwen Grant

For some years, I wrote a monthly poem for SOUTHWELL MINSTER magazine.  (Southwell Minster was built 1108-1300 and is very beautiful.)  Amongst the other poems, I also wrote a series of ‘Miss McPherson and her class’ poems and really enjoyed writing them just as much, it seemed, as people enjoyed reading them.  ‘Harry’ in the poem below, appears in quite a few of the Miss McPherson poems and became a character I was very fond of.  But I was just as fond of the other children who appeared, always taking me by surprise with their very different natures.   Burton Lomax was initially a bit of an enigma.  Not so with Harry! He roared into life and stayed there.

   LOVE ONE ANOTHER?!

Harry said, ‘Please, Miss,
You know what Jesus told us
About loving one another
Like, you know, a sister or a brother?’

Miss McPherson said, ‘I do.’

‘Well,’ Harry went on, ‘I think
The Bible got it wrong.
It should have said,
Only love one another as long
As it isn’t Burton Lomax.
Because,’ Harry was unsteady,
‘If I saw a lion, Miss McPherson,
I’d point to that Burton Lomax person
And say, ‘There, lion, your lunch is ready.’

Chad stood up and said
He’d thought this ‘love’ thing through.
‘What Jesus meant,’ Chad said,
‘Was love one another when it’s good old Chad,
But not to bother, Harry, when it’s you.’

‘No! No! No!’ Miss McPherson roared,
‘When Jesus said ‘Love one another as I love you,’
That, Chad, is exactly what He meant.
Even if that other person is not now,
Nor ever will be, Harry, anything like a friend.
For Jesus knew that if we love Him first
And love Him best,
To love one another, especially Burton Lomax,
Will be the one thing we really want to do.’

‘?!?’ Harry almost asked.
But, ‘?!?’ said Burton Lomax.
                                                         ©Gwen Grant
                                                      

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