L.R. Harvey Poetry

TOUCH-STONES OF DISORIENTATION You needn't collect a sack-full.  Just keep a few tried-and-true  near at hand, like maybe on the night- stand where you can reach them  when the sail stands still and the clay begins to set. Anything will do, but your best bet is whatever’s proven true to the trick of shaking up the sediment building at the bottom of the cup,  the way you once clamored for quarters as the merry-go-round wound down.  Touch them when the cochlear chrystals settle and the vertigo subsides  till you whirl back on the ride. 

RIDE IT OUT Likely nothing more than  a faint trace of indigestion,  but you can quell any doubts  if it dissipates with a Tums  and an hour’s rest. But if  the cramping in your chest  persists beyond whatever fix  you reach for in the medicine cabinet till you begin to suspect that this might be a symptom  of some more chronic condition,  let me first confirm your suspicion, and then suggest this ache might actually be your pass- port out of here. If so, and as we near the border, don't lose it.

CLASS OF 2024 AND OTHER ETHEREAL THINGS After graduation night, hors d'oeuvre plates heaped with well-intentioned  lies about keeping in touch,  the dog left a baby bunny  on the front porch. I carried it  in the shallow hollow of a shovel,  tucked it in dirt beneath the oak tree  next to the bluebird and the bat.  When I came back he’d snatched  another one from some unseen nest. I held it a moment. It was shocked and breathing fast. It’s a shivering thing, the moment,  and one too wild to bring inside and raise it as our own.  Maybe the best we can ask  is that it live to see another day,  and then a quiet front-porch view  to watch it slip away  beneath the blackberry hedge. 

CICADA SONG — for my sophomores; stay “wise fools” foreve r Impossible to ignore you this time of year, cicadas  and seniors. Roughly seventeen  years to prepare and then suddenly  you’re there, red-eyed and hungry for wings if only keenly aware  that everything else is hungry too and likes the taste of you.  No expert here, but survival  seems to entail finding a firm tree  to cling to, a willingness  to vanish into a song far bigger than  the single note of a self, and then,  eventually, a slow emergence as you leave behind your hollow shell,  joining the rest of us as we make  our lilting way to light,  the old world both haunted  and hallowed with our husks.

AGAINST THE GRAIN The room addition transitions  from hardwood to vinyl  plank without a lip, silent  as most stutter-worthy  thresholds prove to be in our brief trip across the living room, which is a momentary stop on this tedious tour where we are politely implored to ogle the collection of knick- knacks tacked on the wall, note the fresh coat of paint,  till with a glance against the grain we chance to look down, unaware that somewhere the very ground had changed.

GIVING UP I’m losing my desire to be clever. As much as I believe  words serve to show us what  we need to say, lighting the way,  today, at least, I think I know, so  to hell with “show don’t tell.”   I think instead I’ll strip naked , cup my hands  to my mouth and shout  the bare essence of  exactly what I’m going for  and nothing more:  Honeysuckle! Cucumber plant!  Cicada song! Sleepy toddler! Home! Home! Truth! Dirt! Home! If they lead me away, slapped with a charge of public  disturbance, at least I’ll know  it worked:      words led me  to something firm and real,  unveiled as these four concrete walls I'll scribble them on.