Guest Poem by Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller is an author, poet and independent book reviewer, who lives in London. He is an alumnus of King’s College London where he gained his Master’s degree and the author of four monographs, including The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen (Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2019) and The Green Man in Medieval England (2022). He has been an active member of several poetry groups and has contributed to a wide selection of poetry magazines and journals. This poem is from Acumen 110.

Gull Island

Unfamiliar shore
a broken doorsill to a part-remembered land
the dismantling sun bleeds
into a rough-hewn slab of sea
and seabirds scream their warning
and welcoming of all that is unfixed,
uncharted, unrehearsed.

Demonstrative as day
savvy as bull terriers
and fierce as the furies
the gulls bark back at the sea
with sharp custom and unflinching eye
in sure defiance and disdain of man and gods.

Ancient and untamed
this wild place
calls us to it
to this place of convergence
this place of sudden recognition
and of sacred blessing.