Camilla Lambert

Walberton,West Sussex, UK

 

 

Camilla Lambert began writing poetry in 2007. Her pamphlet Grapes in the Crater was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in Nov 2015 and Individual poems of hers have appeared in Acumen, Agenda, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review and SOUTH (profiled poet April 2017), also in in various anthologies. She co-organises a small Arts Festival in Binsted, near Arundel, West Sussex, which includes running a nationally advertised poetry competition, from which an anthology is produced.

 

Poem written April 30, 2020

 

 

A grandmother prepares for lockdown

 

The day they last met, the air was sharp and pale,

shadows stayed away, while far below a sail

breezed out of sight. They kept beyond touch,

obedient to advice which could be borne, much

like an April shower, no spiked onslaught of hail.

 

Sharing brave smiles, they promised without fail

to meet again. But granite cliffs soon turned to shale

and crumbled, no toeholds, grass too scant to clutch,

the day after they last met.

 

Toys and books tidied into drawers, she tried to nail

down voices, memories that would not go stale

like small hands resting in hers, but erased the smutch

of squabbles. She unclipped the booster seats, and such

bleak sorrow whelmed her, swept her sobs into a wail

for the day they last met.