L.R. Harvey Poetry

  INFINITE ARRIVAL Sex says it well, as does the smell of dinner rolls, two sensual attempts to hint at what's beyond the sense. What you’re famished for is dwelling in the thin space between becoming and arrival,  a kind of (yes, also beyond the realm  of reason) never-there and always- are, like ceaselessly falling into an abyss in which you’re already caught, or a slow-climb up an end- less hill while standing still—in other words, a poem, the one you'll never plumb the bottom of, but it's always, some- how, felt like home.

  TWO REVERSALS The first was his decision to descend from where he stood behind the elevated lectern,  fraternize with his throng  of perplexed pupils. Second is how our pupils, in tasting of the light he offers, en- large themselves, continue in indefinite dilation until  the crowded lecture hall is nothing but eyes to catch what it is he emanates, ask for  more.

A DARK NIGHT'S PURSUIT Soft thump against hard air  which is invisible to her, as you, without your con- tacts, can surely understand. A moment to recuperate, a question—grant her that. These things, you may recall, take time to recover from, as all who’ve smashed a toe against a midnight side-table can  testify. Rhythmic modulation as she tries again, again,  echoing the ultrasound  of infant heart-beat. Now silence on the stoop, wings stilled. Shhhh, she's asking us a question: do you want  it enough, despite the pane?

ENTERING THE CITY Go barefoot and bring a bell— a priest or two were killed in there. Odd sensation  to be enveloped beyond  your knowing in the pulsing nexus of yourself. Lean in: you’re not alone. Welcome to the holy city, pilgrim,  where eternity is roughly   the size of a tennis ball, and the king introduces you to yourself,                        who you know.

UNANNOUNCED             " Brahman appeared before them, but they did not recognize him." - Upanishads You do not expect, deserve, a visitor, yet still the morning's sur- face ripples with a gentle knock at your back door. Peek beneath the blinds, eyes wide. You likely say something like,  honey, we’ve got a problem, because your single room  apartment can’t accommodate such  a guest. In exactly such a circumstance as this, you're forced  to either—if politely—turn the guest  away, or, depending on your valuation  of the visitor, begin to knock apart what you once thought was home,  the arduous process of making-room. Further, as whatever food your little pantry holds is not enough to feed the full, you may be then required to lie down on the kitchen table, offer up yourself as the meal.

AUTOPSY  Cinch the corpus on the operating  table. Select a scalpel and begin  the slow task of peeling back the fat. Continue in the work  until you hit something indivisible— likely somewhere in the middle,   the size of a peach-pit, probably. It may faintly resemble the little thumb-Self  the Hindu mystics talk about.  If you can possibly extract it,  please do, because it’s what  I’ve been trying to say. If you can’t,  then bear with me as I keep fleshing out                         these damn analogies.      

  IDEAS The big ones thunder like eighteen- wheeler’s grumbling down a mountain: leave them plenty of room to stop.  You’ll find there’s some  let in the light once you pry a few boards loose.  If you encounter one  nagging like a brother in  the back seat, ignore him,  or, inversely, pay attention  to what he has to say.  Remember longing often paves  the path to truth, so if you feel  it tugging like a bluetick on a walk,  you wouldn’t be crazy if you follow it,                             see what it sniffs.  

I USED TO FEEL BAD FOR THE FIG TREE One Summer morning, sudden  as the thick slick of pollen on a black truck's hood,  searching for a bit of shade  he may sit beneath your branches.  Redemption being hungry work, it’s not unlikely he proceeds to reach for more than shade, for something with a little meat  on it, and, it being late  Summer, can we deem this a far-fetched expectation? Now is not, you understand—as the man demands a fig—the time to commence the slow work of fertilization.

  4 OPTIONS Concluding that He’s here, He is.  Concluding that He’s there,  He is.  We err if we conclude that He is  not, or, inversely, shirk the risk.

I HAVE BECOME A MINIMALIST         or, Reflecting on the Passion less by moral or societal conviction,  more by sharing closet space with an  unborn entity. Not only does  she bear our child but also bags of button downs down  the street to Goodwill. It seems I’ve lost another pair of pants to a pink, circular mat, presumably for burping on, (or maybe wrapping in,  who knows?) Today I parted  with a flannel. Godspeed, my child,  and when you get here, don’t be alarmed by the naked man singing The Things We Do For Love.

PRAYER OF A TIGHT-ROPE WALKER All-Knowable if All-Beyond  All-Known—both Final Fact and Never-Answered Question— You, our Unapproachable Ascent and Peak On Which We Stand— Ocean Lapping At Our Feet, and Guiding Strip of Sand— both Formless and Incarnate  Form, Wordless and the Word,  No-Thing and Every-Thing, and yes,  we Might Continue on Forever,  grant us, Chasm-Spanner, balance.

COLD SHOWER Get in, but not before you come to terms it isn't com- fortable, fingers probing you apart like a tangerine.  Expose yourself beneath  the spout, hands out, and if  you further can deduce a way  to slowly peel away your elbows from  your sides, you’ll come to find, (or I suspect,) that it’s  impossible the Water doesn't then inspect every part  of you, clean even the dirt you didn’t know  you carried down  there.

SPARROW IN A CARDBOARD BOX                  — May 4, 2021 Right hand clenching          tight on the extend-a-leash,           my other reaches  down to coddle in the drenched fledgling, shaking with a chill.            What kept it, I suppose, alive,           was Odie's sheer surprise it didn’t fly, his inabil- ity to know what to do           having actually caught one.           Wings tucked tight between my palms, I lay it in the shelter of the neighbor's maple tree,       reciting to myself the part     delineating how the Lord  sustains the birds of air, not me. A few blocks later       and we double back, my question     being, what about the wet ones who can't obtain the air?

WORDLESS Still, I can't help but think what life would be without the shaping-stuff—how then  we’d be in empty ignorance  about exactly how much better we would be—how then we wouldn’t  be , you see, at all—and would it be           (non-being) really all that bad? What if, back then, His pen was just as dry as mine, His spoken efforts, too, produced a gaping sheet of silence on the waters of the deep? If this were the reality, You couldn't even call it writer's block without something to be blocked, right?           Dead peace, and quiet. And speaking of dead, surely no one would go to Hell for believing the wrong ones without the right ones to make them wrong. Maybe fear is what's clicking these keys, mortality. But damn it, I've written a poem again, and you've read it, so here           we are.

SCRATCH-MADE             "From one color do all colors come." - Kabir Observe its unity, coherency,  essential indivisibility  within the batter bowl.  Now spoon it with a ladle on the hot black void,  and as you do, note its shapely declarations firm themselves in space and time. Be sure, before you stack them on a plastic plate, to pause—remind yourself you too are manifested of  the mix. Then having done so,  say Amen. Soak the world in syrup, and p artake.