This is a writer’s town.
Where, in quiet corners of coffee shops,
Caressing cake and cappuccino,
On new varnished cliff top benches,
In tiny studio apartments,
And above galleries and gift shops,
Diligently, they polish their craft
In solitude and patient struggle.
Where, down the steep, unforgiving hill,
Past higgledy-piggledy buildings
That shelter the secrets of centuries,
Old men, like modern day gunslingers,
Shuffle with shabby, sagging satchels
Stuffed with story scraps and post-it notes,
Lassoed around their wrinkled necks.
Where restless waves wash over shingle,
Shifting the site of a billion pebbles,
And where small, redundant, fishing boats,
Their hulls rotting and history forgotten,
Are nudged and tickled by the turning tide
And then left for dead as the sea sweeps back.
Where, on a mile long thoroughfare
Of lawn and flowers and grand hotels,
Echoes of genteel, whispered discourse
Float across the unremitting breeze,
And the plaintive cry of a seagull chick
Resonates across the ragged rooftops.
Where the solemn chimes of an ancient church
Dedicated to an Anglo-Saxon girl,
Ring out at dusk under Shelley’s pale moon,
And where cracked, crippling, steep steps
Unsettle the anxious wandering scribe
Searching seaward for that elusive line.
This is a writer’s town.ffee shops,
Caressing cake and cappuccino,
On new varnished cliff top benches,
In tiny studio apartments,
And above galleries and gift shops,
Diligently, they polish their craft
In solitude and patient struggle.
Where, down the steep, unforgiving hill,
Past higgledy-piggledy buildings
That shelter the secrets of centuries,
Old men, like modern day gunslingers,
Shuffle with shabby, sagging satchels
Stuffed with story scraps and post-it notes,
Lassoed around their wrinkled necks.
Where restless waves wash over shingle,
Shifting the site of a billion pebbles,
And where small, redundant, fishing boats,
Their hulls rotting and history forgotten,
Are nudged and tickled by the turning tide
And then left for dead as the sea sweeps back.
Where, on a mile long thoroughfare
Of lawn and flowers and grand hotels,
Echoes of genteel, whispered discourse
Float across the unremitting breeze,
And the plaintive cry of a seagull chick
Resonates across the ragged rooftops.
Where the solemn chimes of an ancient church
Dedicated to an Anglo-Saxon girl,
Ring out at dusk under Shelley’s pale moon,
And where cracked, crippling, steep steps
Unsettle the anxious wandering scribe
Searching seaward for that elusive line.
This is a writer’s town.
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Tony Quarrington 