Sample Poems by Steve Lambert

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At the Holiday Inn, Ashford, Canterbury Road

We arrive, airplane-travel weary, drink pints
of Carling in the courtyard out back where rabbit
shit dots the tuffets of green grass. The bar and dining room
grope in the shell of a sixteenth-century barn.

We are on our way to Canterbury
and on and on westward from there.

The rabbits, the size of Scottish Terriers, come out
in the afternoon and watch us drink, like the prelude
to an incursion, a scene from Watership Down,
but they keep their distance.

Behind the courtyard, beyond the leering rabbit mob,
one of England’s many River Wyes dies down
to a murky piss dribble. This place is beautiful, but sad,
like a shrug before a sob.

Back inside Tommy, the young bartender, watches
us while his boss watches him spend too much time
with the Americans. The regulars give us “Slaughtered Lamb”
looks. “Wait,” says Tommy when his boss disappears,
“you don’t have Roundabouts in America?
How do you know where to go?”

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In Canterbury

On the River Stour a college boy
walks upside down under a bridge.
Punters and rowers all around
tell the city’s unofficial history:
ghost stories, pub brawls and crawls,
murders. The ghosts of black and grey
friars prowl the narrow streets
like night cats. I see a tall, beautiful
young lady standing on the bulkhead
whose look is so distinct I try
to imagine her life but stop when
it gets too sad. She stands and lets
the human current rush around
the towering rock of her body.

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In Whitstable

Asphalt-black fisherman cabins,
three-quarter size,
as if built for coastal Hobbits,
line the beach promenade.
To the East, the tarmac plant
hulks quiet as a dragon’s horde.

English, if weather could have
a nationality: misty, grey and cool,
everyone seeming to walk
like characters from a spy novel,
hunched slightly forward,
hands in pockets, furtive glances…

Reserved delight creeps
into you like a fever
you want to have. The whole scene
reminds you of how boring
you find sunny perfection…

We walk in our mizzly daze
up Whitstable Beach, swerve left
onto Sea Street, where
the Prince Albert Public House
stands and waits, and is still waiting,
the only pub we pass
without entering, too much atmosphere
to drink in out here.

Back out at the water’s edge
the English Channel spreads
wide west and we watch
ourselves swim across,
past the wind turbines, to Calais
and back, knowing
no one drowns. We want to live

here, but never will.
This Whitstable isn’t real,
but the misty dream you have
of us in some place
we’d always rather be.