L.R. Harvey Poetry

  ARRIVAL — Easter 2024 The gravesite is far vaster than we imagined it. In fact, it’s the whole lot  of us there wandering about  as if looking for a set of misplaced  keys, not just a handful of faithful  women. A gardener picks at the grass,  dreaming about the produce all his other vegetables only wet his appetite for, the one  he swears must exist somewhere  but is too ripe to grow in the famished  nutrients of his home soil. A poe t  chews her eraser, wondering how good  it would taste to actually say  what she’s been circling. You’re there,  too, staring off over the head- stones as if you’ve forgotten the one  thing you needed to remember  at the grocery store, the ingredient to cinch the whole meal together.  When it happens, we all see  something different emerging  from the tomb—fruit, word, key, salt—though we share one  collective inhale as if breathing  for the first time. Someone sighs not half of what we want to say  on behalf of all of us:                             

CONSOLATION FOR THOSE MID-CRISP On the off-chance that you’re a lady- bug wedged in wicker, you may  one day find that what makes you you and not another Latinate beetle has been spray-painted a vernal shade  of green. This means that even were you to miraculously extricate yourself  you’d no longer be yourself  but the sage green ladybug,  set-apart as prophet or pariah in your egg-shell sheen.  The good news is that your death won't occur tangled in a swarm of inter changeables, which is why you left i n the first place, suspicious of the mindless milling and hoping to be somebody more  than what you were. And more  good news: it worked, if not quite the way you envisioned it. You’ve met the painter.  You can never go back to your old, spotted ways. You’ll die here,  of course, a nobody with no one  to tell about it, but at least you’ll go tangled in something bigger  than the screened-in swarm of yourself.

  FM RADIO,   CROSS COUNTRY In this elongated interstate  the music cuts in and out  like a madman in a beat- down Buick. Melody-stutter, static-flutter—no road sign, but it's signal enough to indicate  our status as passing through  another of the many, invisible  thresholds we’re bound to cross  before we get where we’re going.  This is the burden of the homeward bound, forever twisting the knob for a bit  of clarity, ears and something  more than ears tuned tight to catch it coming through clear and hold it there—just there—                 long enough that we’re ferried   forward on its frequency     another late-afternoon leg.             

MISSING PIECE You’ve fallen again for the wiles of the traveling illusionist with his proverbial "step this way" bit, that subtle slight of hand which leaves you leaning in to see where the silver coin of your contentment has melted away like your spouse in the crowd. Though you could swear you kept your vision fixed on the circling  circumstance of solo-cups, you find at each consecutive reveal nothing  real but your own perplexity and a new-found hesitance in your ability to differentiate  what’s empty from what matters.  Self-assurance sufficiently battered, it’s then the magician—who, now that you think about it, looks oddly familiar—smiles, as if  this re-opening of the question were the requisite turn-over  of turf, softening the ground enough that the next part really lands: a laugh like he knows something, a petition to take your hand and reach into your pocket, showing the gathering crowd whatever it is you find. Imagine: what you're looking for right there, i

MAYBE TOMORROW Everything these toddler days is maybe  tomorrow , and she’s picked it up  like a true believer. Maybe tomorrow we can play Play-Doh. Maybe  tomorrow you can be the bear . What’s nice  is that maybe tomorrow staves off  a total collapse when we’re too hands-deep in dishes or folding little shirts to oblige. What almost hurts is watching  her fail to recognize today’s broken promise as yesterday’s maybe tomorrow, merrily sending it another day  down the line. Is this, then,  the proverbial faith of a child, a hope so real and stubborn you can almost feel it in the back of your throat, clinging there like the mucus clod you can’t seem either to swallow down  or cough up?  

HANDIWORK Carpenter Jesus, I’ve recently taken up wood- working. Nothing artisanal, but I'm proud of it  for what it is: a couple sheds, a greenhouse of old windows, a farmhouse table with benches for the screened-in  porch. Most of it’s made of wood I scrap from behind the hardware store or local  construction sites—there’s something more invigorating about the second life of a two-by-four  than its first. Last night I made a workbench. The irony's not lost on me, but I like knowing I needn't ask for help, can do it myself. I’ve even started selling garden boxes to supplement income since the baby you made us. Quick sellers . About 6 feet long. Sometimes I like to assume your point of view  and imagine North Georgia sprinkled with who-knows-what growing in the containers I made:  tomatoes, summer squash, marigolds, whatever else they dreamed up in the available space. At this point  the little shoots are probably just breaking soil, opening their first true leaves to light

 COMPOST BIN “ Take with you words and return to the Lord” — Hosea 14:2 Even if it’s across the yard.  Even if it’s words as unassuming as earth- worm, banana peel, orange rind,   and other odds and ends we happen by in this pile of castings we meddle in. Even if, shouldering  the weight of such words  on our tongues and the tips  of our pens, we come to the real- ization that the returning must happen again tomorrow, and tomorrow.  Even then, when there’s no finishing and nothing to show for our faith- fullness but a pile of inarticulate  dirt and a few sprouts we didn’t know  about, let us return, opening to the light our few true leaves as we dream of vegetables so thick they speak for themselves.

  HERE — "Let us leave theories there and return to the here's here." — Finnegan's Wake When all the doors out appear— for one reason or another— closed, an alternative approach  to bloodying your forehead  on the little, steel-rimmed window  is to shrug your shoulders,  whisper  welp , and then turn  inwards, taking fresh stock  of these four walls and noticing how blank they really are,  how much might be made  of them with this new surplus  of manacled attention. 

WELL-SPOKEN A different kind of death                 to watch a toddler grow ever more  articulate, syntax beginning to form                 its own fierce opinion  that bunny top goes with bunny                 bottoms, not cupcakes,  because this isn’t the wild                fucking west. No lover of chaos  here, but sure, a cynic                of the sensical  as we insist to cement it, meaning it’s hard                 to watch her so excitedly leave off  what I’m just now beginning                to find, babbling my halting way  back to the wild and a light                that doesn’t fade west  as soon as we’re beginning to see the path               worth taking, the one that stutters back on itself                until we're twisted enough to pause, take a deep breath,                and straighten things out.