L.R. Harvey Poetry

THE VISION Five acres, maybe eight, with an oak tree on the hill which overlooks the porch we sit and look out over on. A garden, then however many chickens will produce however many eggs we eat. And geese, or goats, or both. She feels I struggle to untangle the ideal from what it chokes, but what’s more real  than hope? As to tools and other skills needed to steward the soil— tractors and a farmer’s will— here we agree I am lacking,  if differently defined. It’s what I’m hoping to find by going: tools sure enough  to till not just the plot of earth  the house is on, but then the unseen  acres in each of us, the rolling hills between.

  THE SKELETON Sure, it might float back again.  There is a chance, given  how swiftly winds shift  here, how unpredictable the drift of things. Impossible to keep these shores clean for long, our beaches pure in the face of the endless horizon, but this is a bridge we’ll cross another day. That it went away at all  is miracle enough, and well  beyond the justice that we might expect. Another carcass whose rot by right is ours to smell  descended into the all- pervasive pull, so who are we  to wonder why, or really do anything other than join the sea- gulls in their singing  while it sinks?

WEARY, MOSTLY The sufferer is faceless, his shadow shoulders slumped low  beneath a slow and nameless weight.  He begs to be faced,  not fixed, so I ask him this:  Why are you so heavy, weightless  one, who carries less  than many, most ? Death to us is a melody of the old, or those over there, and pain is real but regulated. Why do you bend still?  Wisely he does not speak,  having no mouth to speak  from. But neither does  he right himself. This also seems wise.   

  SLOW INTOXICATION Of course the metaphor is thin pour—the flute is thin  recipient, and quickly over- flows. And yes, we’ll require far more than one such glass to get beyond ourselves, but how fast we wake up on the bathroom floor, reminded how human  we are, unable to hold it all in. The gift is that it falls  at all, if but in steady drips.  Or maybe limits are the gift, that we might always want a bit  more.

SOME THINGS CAN’T BE SHARED I’d like to hold my breath  for long enough that my chest feels like yours must feel  today, at the bottom of a pool  an invisible hand pushed you in.  We’re never taught to swim  in some waters, or instructed how to watch somebody drown  in the clutch of something impossible to ever get a grip on. To go home and lie face-down  in the bathtub doesn’t seem  an appropriate response here. Oddly, neither does calling for the lifeguard, and definitely not writing a poem while your lungs fill, reaching for what’s more tangible than metaphor,    like the firm hand of a lifeguard.

THE ONE WE WAKE AT NIGHT FOR The white light scans us  as we scan the shelves ourselves  (4AM: refrigerators around the world.)  And what in the half-awake world have we stumbled here in the dark to find, if nothing other  than the flavors we can’t combine,  the craving best called The One We Wake At Night For?  Rubbing our eyes to pierce the cloud, we peer to define the face of what has called us from beyond our comforters, the nameless one that twirls on our tongues  in a place beyond the recipes and cookbooks intent to seize and itemize the perfect plate. It is  supremely simple, this elusive taste— just two ingredients make the dish: 1. Not that. 2. Not this.