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
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