When I was a baby, my mum says that I reminded her of a lamb. I think she was possibly blinded by motherly love for her first born child, as I seem to have had the best animal allusion out of my siblings. My brother was a sparrow, my sisters a mole and a lizard.
I’ve always had a love of animals, and lambs are one of my favourites. I don’t think being compared to one as a baby has anything to do with this, but who knows? I especially love this time of the year because of all the lamb spotting I can do.
One of my earliest pieces of writing was about a lamb. I must have been about 7 or 8 when I wrote it, and I remember getting help with the 7th line (it’s a bit back to front and was too advanced for me for come up with myself).
I was clearly proud of myself as I seem to have then presented the poem as a gift to my granny and granddad. If I remember rightly, both sets of grandparents were the lucky recipients of my masterpiece.
This poem means a lot to me, not only because it’s the first thing I remember writing, but because it has survived all these years. It would have disappeared forever if it hadn’t been for my grandparents. They obviously cared enough about it to keep the scrap of paper I handed to them, until many years later when it ended up back with me. I think on a very simple level, this shows just how powerful the written word can be.
You can read The Lost Lamb. I’ve typed it out (complete with spelling mistake) and also posted a picture of the original work. It’s probably the only piece of poetry you will ever read by me, as I tend to focus on prose these days. I think my poetry peaked with The Lost Lamb!
The Lost Lamb
In the meadow behind the tree
A little lamb scardly peeped
Faraway from his mother dear
In the meadow behind the hill
His mother dear looked worried ill
She looked and looked all through the wood
To see her child she thought she never would
At last she saw to her great joy
Peeping from behind the hill
A little face she recognised
She knew her child was with her still
