Broken Water

Two of my poems have gone out into the world recently and come home with shiny sixpences in their pockets.

The first one is called Broken Water and it was commended in the 2012 Barnet Open Poetry Competition. It will be appearing in the competition anthology in due course. 

I wrote it in September while sitting outside the Arnolfini in between sessions at the Bristol Poetry Festival. The process was quite quick, although I had wanted to write it for almost a year, ever since I encountered the Hindu Goddess of Never Not Broken, Akhiladeshvari.  I'd tried several times but I just couldn't find my way in until I sat at the dockside with my notebook and pen and three quarters of an hour on my hands.

                 

                Broken Water

The floating harbour is dark

beneath its lustre.  September

slumbers into dusk.

The people around you drinking coffee,

that girl lounging on the pontoon

(the one in jeans

the pink of ice cream),  

her friend, and the doggedly

jogging man will soon

be making their journey home

to whatever awaits them. 

And you too will leave this moment,

return to the pieces of a life

that can never fit back together  

the way they did before.  

But for now sit. Watch the wind’s

fingerprints smudging the surface

of the Reach.

Resolve to remember

the mutable beauty

                of broken water. 

                                                                            © Deborah Harvey 2012, 2013