Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

My poem, 'Oracle', is going to be published in an anthology, which means it can't pack its red-spotted handkerchief and make its way out into the world of poetry competitions any more, so I'm posting it here.  It's about going into therapy.  (And the chair was red, actually.)

Oracle

This room with magnolia walls

will be your shrine at the base of the temple.

This chair, whose colour you won’t remember,

your rock of prophecy. The view

not a tumult of olive trees, but a dusty strip

of municipal sky through two high windows.

On the occasional table

a box of tissues for the pot-bound

fig weeping in the corner.  Ask yourself

why only now you taste its fruit,

or trace the roots of the knotted tree

so long your rack?

Time to cast memories like runes,

stony hearts and shards of sea glass,

edges blunted by the tumbling of years,

to learn the lithomancer’s craft,

master the ways in which a seer

foretells the past.

© Deborah Harvey 2011

'Deborah Harvey's poems are raw and true. She is the real thing.'    Hugo Williams




My poetry collection, 'Communion', is published by Indigo Dreams and available from them, or Amazon, W H Smith and so on.  Or if you want a signed copy, email deborah.harvey@ymail.com for details.  This poem isn't in it, but you can read some of the ones that are here.