Valerie Morton: Featured Poet

After the Dance

We walk home barefoot, past workplaces
dozing with an eye on the morning

and locked houses where cozy sleepers
begin to stretch away from dreams.

An hour ago music had been our only cause
to move and breathe. We’d raised our hands

waving to a false sun, believing
we knew all the answers.

My fingers were raindrops on your back,
your hand a promise of ecstasy.

Dawn sweeps the pavements as we realise
that somewhere along the way

we’ve lost our shoes.

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It was recently said that “Valerie Morton captures the poetry and cherished memory of domestic familiarity through simple, quiet but effective understatement” (Reach Poetry, Indigo Dreams, Norman Bissett, Jan 2011).  She has been placed in various competitions including Ver Poets, Cafe Writers, The New Writer, Cannon Poets and has poems in a number of anthologies.  She leads a Creative Writing Workshop at a mental health charity and is just finishing an Open University degree.  The featured poem appears in the Ragged Raven anthology The World is Made of Glass published in 2010.