L.R. Harvey Poetry

THE ISSUE, AS IT STANDS Suppose we surrender the words.  Suppose, as such, we so obtain  a nearer apprehension as to that the words eclipse. In such a vein as this, we might begin to slowly ascertain the nearness of the very pulse we necessarily dispel away from us by means of each and every  dim endeavor to compel it near.  Supposing such to be the case,  the room is still. We settle here,  grow acclimated with the presence which pervades. A tension rises in      the air. One of us tries to explain.

EDGING TO APPREHENSION The poem has proved itself, as has the author of the poem, elusive. That said, an odd assortment of persistent pea-brains—perusers of the latent  Word—assemble once again  beneath the dimming light to spend another evening in the presence  of the enigmatic. What to make of this?   And here they've hit, you understand, on the perennial perplexity on  which it all precariously hangs.  Nonetheless, one comes to think   that were the author in the room to see this motley crew persist in poring on his page, that such a question may—to him at least—be less than  pivotal. Interpretation is a messy act.  What matters, surely, is              they’re back. 

GOD BEHIND GOD They’re pulling down the images  by the neck. Columbus has fallen. So too General Lee.  A reexamination of history  has sparked a torching of  the dry, religious cracking of  the calcified. Here, sitting in this wooden pew, I wonder when  they’re coming after You.  And if, when the mob arrives to tear You down, You’ll step out  from behind and shock the crowd.

UNTETHERED It was at the edge of intellect he fell, headlong, into that  for which he sought. Not  deliverance from thought,  but more a kind of whole at which the thought had hinted at, if be it intermittently, the whole of his sojourning. And having fell  he didn’t feel remarkably different.  In the mornings, he still went into work. He paid his bills, (religiously,) to keep the house cool in deep-South summers. What changed was an acknowledgement that he—his very self—was anything but grounded. And more than  that, an apprehension that this, at last, was a base off which to build.

SENSORY REBUTTAL TO THE GNOSTICS And hearing they'd been taught the hope of sloughing off, He spoke to them—the growing crowd of body-bound—saying: I am the fingerprint,  forensic evidence that  here—the scene of such a scandalous encounter—myth and intellect made contact.  I am the pidgin dialect, Creole communion of the hometown vernaculars of heart and mind.  I am—smell that?—the scent  of eternity in passing time,  the whiff of wood smoke pen- etrating your city streets.  I am the aftertaste  of the wine, the one  that lingers on your tongue long after the glass—dare I stretch the metaphor to your very flesh— has been laid to rest. I am—close your eyes— the visible  in all unseen. Now open them. I am as well the invisible  in all that is.  And hearing him, they were touched, as it were, by his words, and if some insisted they reeked of heresy,  some began to apprehend it as an invitation— yes, in their very skin — to taste and see.

  YOUR WORK II To emulate the angler fish.  Immerse your- self  in their darkness.  Then, when they least expect it, catch them  with the merest glim- mer of the light their overgrown eyes are desperately looking for. Best drop the metaphor when they start to wriggle. Let them go. Then fervently                                  up. pray they swim,

IN WHOM WE HAVE OUR BEING Peculiarly enough, we see  by that which we are seen.  As you consider this anomaly,  consider that the inner faculty   by which you now consider  it was once, is, & will be— per- petually —considered. If, on reading this, you feel a sense of panic at what appears to be a refutation of your individuality,  and you begin to pant for air      with a breath that also isn’t yours,  you’re not alone. I mean that                quite literally, as it were.

ANOTHER STEP As you find yourself—in Him— a son, and further come to terms that as such you are necessarily nestled snuggly in the middle of the God- head, you but begin to apprehend the all that such participation  must entail. And when, much like this poem, you find that such   a pilgrimage promises no static end point, you’ll either ditch the trail or lean  into it with ever-renewing vigor,  finding, paradoxically, that more and more the trail itself has come to seem—if intermittently—a home. 

IN WHOM WE MOVE I have a large, black dog. What this  entails is many—albeit brief— encounters in the dark. What this en- tails as well is coming to accept that even most familiar ground—think, the trek between your pillow and the kitchen sink— is hounded with a presence. In time,  (considering the circumstance,) you learn  to tread lightly. Enough collisions and you also learn look for him in  every nook and cranny, an oblique form  of inspection which hinges heavily on the periphery. All this to say, I’ve come to better apprehend, if via the terms  of my large, black dog, the nature  of another presence with whom we share a space.  

THE IMAGE, MARRED No, the image had been more than  marred—mangled, we might even  say. Nonetheless the image was   and duly is , albeit it now in pieces  strewn around the room. Still, it’s  such an image’s continuance, despite the altered circumstance, that thus inclines the artist to attend just such a mess as ours. With bloody hands he gathers in the shards, intent to re-create the image as he'd once intended it, an image far beyond our slim criteria for excellence.  If not for the first time, once again, and even better than before.  The first was love. The second, more.