L.R. Harvey Poetry

Timeless Truth On mile marker seventeen my dashboard clock gave off a dying flicker and then the screen went dark.                  The outer world as seen through windshield glass                      rushed past as time marched on in measured highway lines, but here within my truck-cab universe   the world was paused. It was as if I was no longer late for work; I had no day ahead or morning behind                       to cause me stress or sorrow, regret or joy; for all I had was now and now and then again the now – and in that timeless time of endless present tense (for in that single moment it all made sense) I knew with certainty      just how much better the world would be if we embraced the actuality that all we’re guaranteed  is now;      just how much better the world would be if we shut off our clocks  to live this timeless truth.

I hope in heaven there's thunderstorms, "Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good." - C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) the kind that coming cause the sky to smother the waiting world in damp grays, and robins to hungrily eye the soaking soil for worms they know will soon scatter the concrete like punctuations on a pavement page. And if it’s not too much to hope I’d like an earthquake, something sufficient to shake my heavenly mansion’s golden doors, and then to shake my cultural belief that Eden will be nothing more than rainbows, diapers, and tranquility. I hope in heaven there’s thunderstorms and hurricanes and tsunami waves and whatever else it takes for us to see the world was always giving us but a glimpse Of a Perfect Wildness.  

A Moment This pen has too much ink. My O's are starting to sink into themselves like Einstein's black holes, sucking the surrounding letters into their abyss as if I didn't need those consonants. The P's have decided to assume the role of courtroom gavels, pounding the page       as if I'd miss their purpose if they didn't make a soggy spot somewhere along the line. It would all be fine if quantity of ink and quality of poem were directly proportional,     but most of the time there's something I want to say I cannot find a working pen or I find a pen like this, and then I find I'm left to watch and wonder at the way that ink and paper react when too much of one is in contact with the other; but maybe learning to simply watch and wonder at the winsome ways the world works is truer poetry than any line that I could write.

On a critical choice on Monday morning I have decided that joy is a decision. I think it happened on a Monday (in February if I'm correct,) when I had overslept because of overwork and it was cold -                          and Sunday night had been anything but a Sabbath rest, and the next twelve hours lurked like Grendel in the fens - but then again that was just the day I decided joy was a decision. It's raining outside, and the menacing form of Monday now emerges from the swamplands yet again, God-cursed and banished as is his lot, bent on ravaging the joys that light the halls of Heorot. I've decided that joy is a decision; now all that's left for me to do is open the door and face the rainy morning, picking up my sword and choosing joy.