Stuart Miller-Osborne

In the Field of the Vapours The grasses grow to different heights The grass nearest to the railway line Is short and summer sparse Whereas the grass nearest The Road of Sensible Praise Is much taller and more lush   From where I normally sit The differing length Of these grasses Distort my view of…

Guns are booming over the town once more And men and women from the seventeenth century Patrol the streets and mingle with the Saturday shoppers War is never far away   The chatter of the muskets does not disturb Mrs P As she cleans the brasses in the school chapel Watched by generations of long…

Inside the Victorian clock tower written in pencil on a beam can be found the following graffiti Nancy, Bob, Roger and me slept here in the July of 63 I found these words During my search for Elvis Who had been reported As being seen in the town Some years ago    

The day was fading above the Reculver Towers into a milky panorama as it often did in mid-July Children were searching for unchartered seahorses in the orange rock pools exposed by the tide As their parents sat in front of the beach café and took tea from bone brittle china cups Tall girls in black…

Two Woodpeckers and a Magpie In a tree near the River Stour two Woodpeckers and a Magpie argued over its remaining fruits a boatman drifted by but did not notice the disturbance as he was reading the Bible   Kent Mirror the languid flowers always lay peacefully in their beds as I passed them on…

Index of a Few Words Nobody holidays in Margate anymore apart from lonely artists seeking the modern children no longer touch the clouds with their sandy spades and perch with amazing balance on the splendid steps near the Victorian clock   These steps are washed twice a day by the reluctant tides but are only…

The Jackdaw Straws awaited the vacancy of the picnic tables   They would dine before returning to the circle trees    

A King Charles Spaniel sat at the highest window of a Georgian house that overlooked the market square in Devizes It was watching the passing clouds little did it know that far above on one of these clouds Dino and Aeneas were sitting naked deep in conversation with the equally naked Topsy and Turvey Dogs…

  The old men of the islands could not remember such a tempest The destructive wind had blown for days Many ships had been lost and many unknown lives ended But some sailors survived and these has been rescued by the good people of the islands. One of these was an Italian sailor who was…

Romance As Tom lay trapped in thin grasses in the deepest part of the moat he wondered at the waters that had once occupied the region. It was dry now and the soil beneath him showed not even a hint of the recent dew. Above him Penelope stood looking down, she was silent. Tom looked…