L.R. Harvey Poetry

THE SCOUT I am an ant                          on Your body’s wall, seeking a crack                          in Your el- bow. There You                          will lead me  down, down,                          into the deep  spaces where                          the dark seizes me, and                          we colonize.

HOW I FIRST CAME TO KNOW YOU Five boys in the house and a bone-  tired saint, so dad bought a trampoline  to aid a mutual escape.  He raised one pole then placed another opposite, again and again  until there stood a modern Stonehenge   in a ring of paradoxes: this and also this,  this but also this. Only with this  ancient structure set in place could we then  stretch the necessary tension tight enough to send us—if briefly— above our perceived captivity  and weightless in a higher plane.  Then we’d fall back down again.

A MODERN SHIPWRECK With a real love for the ship— or at least, their idea of the ship— in the mist they separated like the waves Moses walked between, grave  in their conviction that the land  promised was— listen, you fools! —this way.  If there was anything in common  between them, it was a certain  surety that with a bit more strength on their side they might wrench  the rudder for good. Another thing they shared was the pity of the old ones.  They kneeled on the shore, praying their sons might remember the game they used to play when they were children, the summer one where they rocked the inner tube until  momentum performed the inevitable.

A FEW THINGS I BELIEVE That every one of us is hungry for the answer the pantry  just ran out of. That all will be fed by something. That there are toxins in the food  widely available on the shelves,  and there is no one but ourselves to blame—those who claim  what is organic, pure, and never crammed or compressed—that anyone   still feels compelled to crack a can. That given the crowds slowly killing themselves, we might reconsider the messaging.

THE EXPANSIVE PARTICULAR What ensued  was this: it was right there—the word  that he was after—but still so far  elusive as a sun-spot. Amused at first,  those in the car began to thirst themselves for something more  definitive than an airy “no…” to their suggestions, the occasional “that’s not it,  but like it,” but soon were over it, minds stuck to their thighs sweat- stuck to summer leather seats.  He himself began to wonder if he'd better let his mind wander until he forgot the desire. That, or didn’t  care anymore. It worked when he couldn’t name what’s-her-name in that movie— why not this? Or then again, maybe someone had already said it,  and this was just a case of mis- placed expectations, like staring straight over the person you planned to meet for coffee because you imagined them differently.  His need to know or give up needing to know alternated like the yellow lines,  or more accurately the exit signs  in that they were interspersed a bit further apart and each woul

RENOVATIONS "What do you think?" I ask him as we size each other and "what seems to be the problem." It's one till now we’ve lived with, but that's no way to live as my wife says.                             It looms, a three-inch cliff to climb into the kitchen, tall enough to trip up even the familiar  on a midnight pilgrimage to water.  I may not know the fix, which is why he’s here, but at least as a believer in God I know how such canyons form, the slow accumulation of sediment.          It starts   with something pure at base: hard- wood, say.     Then one of us decides it needs to keep up with the times and overlays a loud design  of laminate.       When the times  are no longer the times, someone else  moves in and tries to update the space  to fit the times again, something  that says yep, we’re cutting edge here , cutting an edge to trip a stranger’s children who will inherit  the house we’ve built. On and on.                        

A THEOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE or, AN ARCHITECTURE OF THEOLOGY  Sawdust from the circular saw stings his eyes. He once saw  what he wanted, but now sees the complications are more deeply embedded than they looked when he began his work.  Difficult enough for a carpenter, constructing a house, to discover his 2-by-4’s holed with termites, whole sections hollowed-out and snaking right to the heart. How is he supposed to erect a dwelling-place with such  materials? Still, even this is much more feasible than the situation  we now find ourselves in: us boards, termite-infested,  attempting to construct  a carpenter according to our  understanding of woodworks, confused when he is hollow, dry, and without much to say.

  YEAR-ROUND I read somewhere that all soil  is a single organism, a whole, somewhere else that I should know this  intuitively, being nothing less.  When my knees are locked, now,  refusing to bend themselves low  in submission, I go outside  to pull the clover weeds around my pepper plants.  When weather prevents such outdoor endeavors,  I make my way to the interior.  All I'm digging at is,  there are plenty of weeds to keep us busy here, and many forms of prayer. 

ANNUAL VISIT At the Krispy Kreme on Person St. there is a window for more than priests to peer, unmediated, into the holy  place, unveiling the interior where every sweet and good thing finds its origin.   Once a year we would press our hands and noses to the glass in a kind  of upright prostration until a kind  college student in a paper hat would try  to explain the how of it: how the dough  was made, or where the extra icing flows after every baptism. Even then  we knew machines could not explain the mystery. Even then we understood  the wisdom offered in the word- less workings: what matters  here is direction and posture.  The infinite overflow of glaze will cover all that moves towards  it—no questions asked—given  they lie flat and with an open center.  For those unwilling to do so,  the way is flanked with hands to throw them out.