L.R. Harvey Poetry

ENTERING THE BASEMENT There was a lot more there than we were, well, aware of. Much of what he grew  he canned, unwilling to throw  away even what no one wanted,  including himself. He himself had forgotten what all was stored  beneath the living room floor  of the house, where no more  than a dusty ray slithered on the chance he cracked  the door to let us glimpse a dark as fecund as soil and stretching deep as a mine, a mind.

PERSISTENT Was it love, this odd affair which commenced on her  first glimpse of the power  outlet, and this in sheer  deference to the many other things offered as outlets for her energy? How like her father in this agonizing towards,   her entire being bent  on grasping what isn't meant for grasping, getting her fingers inside—O Lord—the generator.

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP where they’ve ditched sight for other means of apprehension. Sonar  is popular, one of many forms of casting out for an answer from  the apparent absence. Per evolutionary  theory, such communicative capabilities  develop only with the dimming of other faculties for knowing who else haunts the water we swim in.  That, and time. Interested in   whether or not you thrash  alone in the bottomless trench of the universe? The old ones  were as well, and for a better vision closed their eyes, sent  out a cry, and listened. 

WORDLESS The life is cramped there  in the word’s angular body. Still, the life must yet be fleshed for consumption, if still alive and everything but still. Try as we will, it’s sharp protrusions scrape like un-chewed chips, hooking like a hang- nail in the brain’s  soft esophagus. Digestion  occurs only in the organ  lower down, which explains not just this hunger but the pain which then accompanies our best attempts to explain it.

NO RETURN Having faithfully followed            the blazes   chiseled in the wood to guide your trek on the thin           track leading up the mountain, standard practice is to catch            your breath, a photograph, then hitch  up (once again) your pack to begin           the long descent. But when  the climb is anything but standard,            the blazes etched in the heart towards a summit always beyond           the one you're standing on; when at every peak you find "leaving" isn't quite           the word for what you did, seeing you brought it all with you; when ahead new ones         poke through an endless horizon like little shoots, there is no reason           to return, then, as there’s nothing to return to—remember? the whole of it           came with you on your slow ascent. This means you may be climbing           forever and forever be right at home.

IN VISIBLE The ones we're after— the invisible  things —are behind no other veil  than the thick one we ourselves knit— thread by thread —with the slow, persistent  hands of familiarity, hiding instead— if only in the way plain  sight is sometimes called a hiding spot —in visible things,  like the very words we’ve been  around enough to never think  of rending them apart— get to the heart of it— and find the root.

PURÉED PEAS AND OTHER SACRAMENTS Let us not then turn  away from even one  of the good things given  us to feast upon,  but actually turn again— that is to say, re -turn— to receive them much the way  as when we first began  to eat: without question so long as love’s hand held the spoon that itself held nothing less  than love itself made manifest.

PUNCTUATED A little focused time  would serve to clarify  exactly how the members  interlock but then more  difficult to rock the boulders in the stream and inter- rupt the flow of things from its habitual tumbling which is another way of saying so that uninvited meaning  might swell to overthrow  the rutted course so tell me who wants a well- punctuated poem or soul or if we think broad enough a god

THE SCIENCE FAIR The task is to assemble— given a bin of odd materials  and not enough time—not a structure but the architect entire. No other than a living, breathing builder capable of constructing you in return will adequately  satisfy either the criteria or yourself. God-speed, then,  and when you run up against your life-giving limitations, use your imagination.

CAGED Himself enclosed, the one did not deserve the reputation as his brother's keeper, as if his body were the bars that beg at least a roughing up if escape is the hope,  which it is. He too is subject to the harsh treatment  of the bound, harbors hopes for open waters, the same hopes  found in who he sleeps beside.  It is the work of tired minds desperate for dichotomy  and reticent to believe  that all may be set free  which pries the two apart, as we  tell ourselves one day the ribs  will be when the soul escapes.