L.R. Harvey Poetry

SCOLIOSIS  I love not having skin in the game and hate myself for that. By way  of remedy, I think I’ll take a stand on something, start small and find a friend who sees it differently than me, then later meet for coffee since,  in the moment's heat, I spilled  a comment I regret. Coffee bills are high in a world full of back- bones, so I suppose my prayer is that  I’d spend a little more on coffee, if also have the courage & humility to foot the bill for reconstructive surgery when one day I receive a diagnosis of scoliosis (which really everyone is diagnosed with at some point in life,) and need be to be set straight.                            

WHERE TWO OR THREE As primer for the prayer, the pastor summons us to join our hearts before the Lord , an odd request for any- one unlearned in the lingo of liturgy, but one, for native tongues, accepted simply with a nod, or fold of hands.  There is no blood or screams or corpses littering the chapel floor,   an absence which is either testament to grace (per Reformation doctrine) or really just another affirmation  that we are, in fact, victims of a vision to coarse to witness the multitude now  bursting through bras and button downs, who gather laughing in a huddle round  the altar, breaking bread and wine like reunited foster siblings too-long separated by silly human restrictions.

TWO THEOLOGIES OF AN AT-HOME PREGNANCY TEST In this first scenario, You are the second line we hold up to the light a second  time, twist and squint because depending  on what we want to see we see. Be slow in judgement, Lord—our hesitation to  commit ourselves has less to do with who  You are and everything to do with what  if You are not , and how can we be sure? We might,  of course, reverse the metaphor. In this case,   You are the existing One, the One who is , and we the slim potentiality. If this is more in line with the reality, I'd like to think You're holding us with a hopeful hand, pacing anxiously round the cheribum as you wait.

CALL US IMPATIENT IF YOU WILL The pressing question being when ,  You surely understand our aggravation with the faceless ambiguity of wait, our ingrained tendency to pitch a fit  and make a mess about the place in the endless interim. Imagine this:  a toddler dons his swimming trunks and grabs a float to ask his father when they’re leaving (as was promised him) for the neighbor's pool. If, per se,  the father were to simply tell him wait,  were then to disappear upstairs without any further indication as to when the wait would terminate, it wouldn’t  be surprising if the child were to fill up  the kitchen sink in a provisional attempt to entertain himself, proceed to flood it accidentally because he doesn’t  know any better—he is, after all, just a child—and then to yell out Dad! right when it's all                                      high water and hell.

ALL MANNER OF THINGS Despite a smattering of centuries,            one uterus, (and add a multi-tiered                     divine experience of which I can’t  relate,) we get each other, Julian           and I, her little ribbons streaming                      in the sun as we totter on the see-  saw of this mortal weal & woe.           But really all you need to know,                     she explains , is that it ends well , which honestly confuses the hell           out of me since I'm squatting in                     the dirt when she says it, but then I'm headed up and as our visions           cross she laughs as if to explain                     and one day you'll just stay there.

24TH Come morning we’ll gather, celebrate  His scandalous intrusion past  our scribbled sign which rashly read, No trespassing on pain of death ,  His uncoerced decision to descend to time and tidy up the mess we’d made about the place. But that, of course, must wait. This is the Endless Night,  when hours flop fat and heavy like flat tires, so what are we to do but toss and turn and trust the ache is evidence of something worth the wait,  then wait?

ADVENT ABSURDITY I’ve grown, if imperceptibly, indifferent, as if the sheer absurdity  of a virgin knocked up by an invisible spirit to scandalously procreate the God (mind,  while still a virgin ) were nothing out  of the ordinary. Come, shout it in my face that                                    'this is utterly insane'— slap me, say, but just remind me how ridiculous even a name like YHWH is, a Hebrew tetragrammaton which I think means something like Yes, attempt to sound it out, and when you come up hopelessly short,                                         t here I am.

GETTING THROUGH In a decade eggnog-thick with conspiracy theories,  here’s another one: My prayers are being intercepted.  No? Examine the facts. Cancer still inhabits the bodies of good people. Deacons bicker over how to congregate in love. My niece (I know it was a niece) was never  born. It’s not, as far as I can tell, an inability on His  part to answer them—instead, I doubt they’re ever getting there at all, caught in transit like a Christmas  gift arriving on the 27th. But who, you rightly ask,  would snatch a prayer before it reaches Him, would pluck it from the air like a street magician snags a quarter from your ear? I’d tell you if I could,  of course, but my suspicion is the squirrel taking  residence above my bed, curled up around a mound of Help us, Lord ’s and T ell me why ’s, enough to see  him safely through the Winter months. Joke’s on him: he of everyone should know that no filtration  system is fine enough to keep a persistent one f rom slinking through the vents—hel

RAPTURE, 3:20pm If you’re committed to a trumpet and a snowy stallion, fine,  but other than a couple knights & stewards sleeping deep beneath a gym or parking garage, most of us  will mostly be confused. Why  not try a bell instead? Ring past   the ruckus of another day like bells do, and not the brass kind atop a tower but one which tells the teachers ok you can breathe again , the kind which plunks their pencils back in hungry bags as if to signify that yes, our work is done  today, and now it’s time we pack it up and all                                            go home.

LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR Back then we pared away the fat to get to bone—for 12 and 8 uncovered 2, at least according to the answer sheet— then scratched it down   and did another one,  another one, elated with  a rush of confidence that yes , something’s at the base of this, and constant , too! Our words were few, but we could recognize that this was better than deserved,  kindred to the force which  Lady Julian of Norwich  earlier articulated Love in this, her hefty Revelation , a text that honestly I'm more than glad to read for grad-school if I hadn't found the underlying principle already with a #2 pencil, proven the existence of something steady.

MIGRAINE No courtesy of explanation other than that yes, something’s  very wrong , once or twice   a month my brain is vice- grip pliers, angry hive of bees,  a big white rat intent to teeth his way to freedom. Milligrams  are insubstantial things, (a form  of customary gratitude when some- one shakes a couple in your hand,)  cause really nothing does  the trick except the yoga pose  that looks like an Islamic call  to prayer, where slowly all  the juice comes rushing to the head like crowds of citizens intent to watch them crucify a Jew. See what a little blood can do?

YELLOW LIGHT Lo, so near if so damn far, as if our freedom teeters on a needle point, and l ook !,  a land of milk & honey beck- ons across an asphalt sea. No, it isn't chariots today but something just as mean and capable of creaming us as we attempt to cross, so this  is where we risk it all, I guess,  gas it with a desperate prayer— our Steady Hand, get us there.