Miss. Esme G. Cameron

Despite the fact she
knew all
the Latin names for
garden plants
and was a dab hand
at ikebana ..
She also played viola,
flute and piano ..
Every now and then,
she would also
appear in church on
Sundays
and was renowned
for writing
an occasional novel ..
It is said
she may have looked
like a nun
and dressed like some
old librarian
but she thought and
wrote like a
well-versed dockyard
hooker ..
Although to be fair,
somewhere
beneath her pince-nez,
the tartan shawl
and tweeds, our not yet
quite famous
Miss. Grace Pratt didn’t
only sweat,
but she also, did bleed
some of the
most exquisite poetry
you are ever
likely to read and the
more risqué,
the better it seemed ..
But then that was her
secret you see ..
At times in-between
her verses
and stanza’s or prose,
only a handful,
the privileged few, ever
knew she
would occasionally puff
on a cigar,
or one of those French
cigarettes,
that she always kept in
a drawer filled
with old fountain pens,
a few saucy postcards
and a single
letter marked Flanders,
France 1918 ..
Grace Pratt helped me
one hell of a lot
while I was growing up
and falling in
love with this beautiful
beast that
we now all call poetry ..
But the reason
I write now, is I recently
read that
Miss. Esme G. Cameron
formally known
as Grace Pratt, died at
home in
her sleep then aged one
hundred
and one whole year’s
young, but who’s counting ..

For anyone who might be interested, Esme G. Cameron was Graces pen name ..