Antony Osgood lives a skimmed-stone’s bounce from Margate. His first non-fiction book was published in 2020 and a second will be out in 2022, both through Jessica Kingsley. His story Haus des Meeres appeared in BlueNib, September 2020, while the prose-poem All My Darlings Waiting was published by Literally Stories in May 2021. A poem written in a bread queue, called Barrier Nursing, is in the 100 Words of Solitude anthology by Rare Swan (Switzerland). He is completing his third novel. Retired early from academia and psychology, he passes his time with little to show for it.
Antony Osgood’s writing on disability and autism can be found at http://tonyosgood.com/
Come, rest a moment
The garden is too cool for daily worry
Leave the world at the curb
Here brown birds serenade lemon hours
Their hymn fills gaps
In breathless conversation
Share unhurried shade
We’ll be as Tolkien’s trolls
Watching the world pass slow
Upon catholic donkeys
Crammed into braying buses
Upon push-bikes
Burdened by tomatoes
Spend a hushed hour naming
New species of women
Singing secrets
Into the shells
Of grief-stricken tortoises
Come, sit a Corfu while
In an untilled paradise
Where no word announces itself
Share calm shadow
Be one of three old men with concrete eyes
And parched lips
Bent on slowing their Sisyphus spinning
As the hillside village turns
Its giddy way
Through a market morning
Permit your limbs to harden
Root your flesh to stone
Be pebble
Be silent as knowing olive bark
Become Odysseus
Gold and beautiful as orchard blossom
Come, then, calcify peaceably
Settle yourself
Allow time to stumble over your grasp
As it stretches toward
Our few blue horizon tomorrows
The Cranes of Gozo
The cranes of Gozo
Took fright one Sunday after lunch
As people dozed
In carbohydrate shade.
Took wing, awayed themselves,
Birdsonged enough was enough more than enough,
Thudded air with metal spindles, concrete blocks,
Rose high and slow,
Clutched shopping centres,
Lifted apartment blocks in talons
Rid the narrow streets of lorries,
Harbours of rich playthings,
Easy as tossing aside a tablecloth.
Silken the townscapes flowed,
Leaving old stone homes
With ornate tiles, courtyard gardens,
Wood verandas blinking in sun.
Church bells rang out the miracle,
Pealed loud in hunters’ ears
Who aimed by instinct at any flying thing,
Yet shot wide by choice,
Being glad for small fields,
Neolithic landscapes, old ways, old spaces.
Caught up with
Watching the cranes
Ignore Comino
Summon brethren
To free themselves of Malta,
Each hunter lowered a gun
Instead raised thanks.
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Poetry in this post: © Antony Osgood
Published with the permission of Antony Osgood