L.R. Harvey Poetry

remember you are a hitchhiker Take in a little too much April sun in porch-front wicker chairs, then sip on the clink of ice, sip chatter in the trees. Run  your tongue along the salted lip and think about how beautiful it is to taste,  to be. Chew up this April evening like you’ll never eat again, and laugh at haste and Mondays and deadlines and all the subtle tricks of iPhone clocks that lure you further from this holy present.                               But for every moment of this,  go walking in the street. See a worm  half-crushed half-wriggling on the asphalt, twisting  like a chained-up dog. Drive by the sweat-pant lady holding the cardboard sign. Eat fruit gone soft. Whatever it may be, do what it takes to see the shadows behind the light, to remind yourself that hitchhikers at the Motel 6 may rest, but always with their backpacks zipped,                                                                            

heaven’s gates look a lot like concrete guard-rails I cannot help but feel  that I have sinned, somehow deserve  to sniff the bumper of a teal  Toyota Corolla with faded decals, words gone white.                   Or maybe, (it crosses my mind), this is a type of test—I sit deeper in  the canvas seat, attempt  to settle down, relax into a mental space of grass.  In 10 we have not moved, and I am anxious.  To be the elect,  I sigh, watching the cars sail by  on one of those side roads that must, somewhere, have an on-ramp                     that only few can find.

the world and I are kin The ladybug on the porch-front railing, black  on red on white-wash white, is still.             A folded stack  of mountains, patched in dappled light  and shade, is balding                                   below a cloud that clearly forgot  the nature of clouds,  smeared straight across the sky without any puff or swirl or shape.  Strange place, this world, this spinning stillness of space,  and stranger still  that I understand,  am understood.   

a neglected stroller Broadside along the bridge on Broad, it gazes  on abandoned train rails running beneath while up above red Buicks carry ladies deep in conference calls and lukewarm tea. I cut my dashboard radio, hoping to hold the cradle's silence, but by that time it’s passed into my rearview and the garret of my soul  that ponders things like baby carriages  left rotting beside the road.                                             It will not tell  its secrets, as shuttered as Miranda’s Books  across the yellow lines. It needn’t tell— it’s told enough by being there, looking out over the steel railing, perpendicular  to Broad Street’s concrete veins. Its presence claims,  questions:                  How can an abandoned stroller  run parallel to anything?  

Saturday Morning         November 23, 2019 Blankets, books, and rain,  coconut coffee creamer frothing white on top my white clay mug, and steam.  The way a morning invites a silence deep as that from which  I have again emerged, slowly, painfully, and not by choice.  It balances on a pin-prick, wavers.    I will not dare to breath until  the coffee cools and she gets up  to squeak the shower faucet—I will  not be the catalyst of chaos, disrupt  the glassy surface of the day, wrinkle the wholeness of beginnings.

annotations + trauma Do you have sticky notes?  For what?                  Don’t we have to annotate?   Yes, but you own the book.  I won’t invite the chaos to  the clean .  [His eyes, his past, are dark. He’s seen the abyss. What else should I have said?]    Yellow or red?

an unanswered question  Despite popular demand  I’ll never be sure.    But you’re  the teacher .  Define that.  You feed us knowledge .  You’re hungry, but  most days all I have to offer are saltines.  But why saltines? Because, most days, that's all I have to eat. I cannot share what I do not have myself. They make us thirsty . Me too. I f you find water, lead me there.

wandering I do not feel him near .  The forest is often lonely, dark.  Well I’m afraid of dark .                                      You’re right to fear.  I too am terrified of dark things lurking in the shrubbery beside the path.  How can we know  we won’t be eaten?                              We can’t.  So now what?                       So “on we go”  as Gandalf says.                             But where?  Straight through the forest of course,  where else?                   You promise I’ll make it out?                                                               No. But I swear  you’ll see the fireflies.  So I’ll still be left in darkness,                                         alone?  Well, Something makes the fireflies glow.

Reflection The last time I felt this upside-down and out-inside was Thursday, settling in to watch The 60’s in the States . I saw there bleached-white sheets suffocating panthers, panthers ripping up sheets out in the streets outside the church, while inside a black woman hugs a white-woman’s child, a white man  in a navy suit croons out Amazing Grace beside a black man  in a purple suit—                          how sweet the sound.   All happened. How love and hate can intermix like Solomon's wisdom and his wives both living in the palace I could not comprehend, until the credits scrolled away, and there I sat in the reflection.