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Bristol , United Kingdom
I'm co-director of the Leaping Word Poetry Consultancy, which provides advice for poets on writing, editing and publishing, as well as qualified counselling support for those exploring personal issues in their work - https://theleapingword.com. My fifth poetry collection, Learning Finity, is now available from Indigo Dreams or directly from me.

Thursday 1 October 2020

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2020

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme this year is Vision. It reminds me of the time I was laid up with a broken leg back in 2015; in addition to the break itself, it also took me a while to get over the shock of such an unlikely accident (falling off the front door step) and the effects of the anaesthetic following the operation to pin my bone back together. I didn't suffer hallucinations but I did spend a lot of time asleep, and also in that strange place between wakefulness and dreaming, where I think this poem comes from. It's a sort of vision come inherited memory, I think.


After the Fall


comes the break 

with all that's normal


the dislocation of lying flat

watching the ceiling's every move

hairline cracks a cryptic

map of its intent


Hour by hour 

I shape my wait with sound


rain and hailstones blinding skylights,

the sullen mutter of the fire,

the twitching dog who dreams of grass 

beneath his paws


the soft-shoe stealth of creeping days

their velvet glances as they leave me

to the wolves


In fractured sleep, half-waking haze

I hear the click of nails

across the kitchen floor



©Deborah Harvey, 2016

from Breadcrumbs, published by Indigo Dreams Publishing




Plus a lympathetic Ted



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