L.R. Harvey Poetry

HANGRY If the answer sashays in on a silver  platter, tidy as an hors d'oeuvres served in a little crinkled cup  and garnished with a sprig of rosemary or a strawberry slice, nice , though it’s a safe bet that  the question isn’t getting at  the meat of the matter, which  even now is being prepared behind  those heavy, swinging doors for those with a reservation, or—funny enough— without reservation enough to demand what's really going on back there this many- an-hour, declining  the establishment's arsenal of black- tied offers of a little something to dull the edge and placate the growl.

CLEANING Dizzying thing about days is how they exist in a vacuum, the present hopelessly wrapped around  the spinning spool like pet hair whirling in perpetuity. But then, no doubt the bag grows heavier  with every pass, confirming  our suspicion that yesterday did ,  in fact, come to pass, if at the last  so much dust. And equally sure is that somewhere at the far end of the room the cord will soon grow tight like a chest,  suddenly yanking from the wall  to drench everything in an uncanny  still. Still, on this drab October Tuesday  in the living room, hope  scoots stubbornly along in front  of things, refusing to be sucked up.

 FORWARD But sometimes, if something less              than the proverbial Aha! , the gift  is not a final arrival but the arrival of another compassed by a kindred  calibration, briefly falling in along- side you to share a story, a few steps, and what tattered fragments  they                possess of a map that has kept them                               company on a particularly dusty stretch of road.

LOOKING FOR A TRACT Hard to find a good hill to die on  these days, a good tract of the real on which to make your estate, what with the rate of construction  so intent on leveling it all in the name of affordable sub-developments. In theory, you just want a place to call your own, an old oak like a pin making clear that Yo u Are Here and shading the spot where a headstone  will survey the clearing of your belief. You want roots so deep you trail dirt on your trips through town, a tenet so immovable that when the bulldozers come they'll have to mow you down. And when you really get down to it, it could be more than theory,  but in this current economy you’d need to move pretty far out to afford such conviction, likely even putting  some miles between you and your welfare, maybe even family and friends, which is where—for most of us— the conversation stutters, concedes, never really beginning, never utterly at end

INTERSTATE I’ve come to appreciate a bit  of a commute, much the way I like my hall ways long between rooms.  Nice as it sounds to have it all  conveniently here, sheer open- concept, some of us soon accept  we don’t need any help mucking  our lives into one,  indefinable jumble, no thresholds to stop our tumble into the long blur. It comes at a cost, sure, but so does any th ere   worth making towards.

STAY ON YOUR GUARD He worked as if each hair mattered,  as if it didn’t matter that I had to be  somewhere by five, which I let slide  somewhere around the right ear. Right here ,  he explained, is the lost art of the part ,  though we didn’t part for forty minutes yet, his fingers in no hurry to measure length, width, and breadth. What is a look, a life, but the thick mound of thin decisions  made at the end of a pruning knife? In some trades it's wiser not to rush. And then around the side-burns the razor slipped. Shit . Give us this day our daily grip, because lord , how quickly i t can go from here to there, how sickeningly swift— regardless the furrowed brow, how meticulous till now— it can all be laid bare.