L.R. Harvey Poetry

French Drain Quote How the house is built  you can't hill soil up  the siding, level out  the grade. A little self- forgiveness: You weren't there when the land was made. Downspouts help but won’t address how Georgia clay holds rain like a thick, wet resentment, swelling to buckle  the basement’s knees. No one’s saying it’s free,  but life at such a degree  means shaping oneself  a vein through the heart of the yard, pumping its share of the downpour towards  more fruitful pursuits  on the other side: Bee Balm  and Buttonbush, the comeback miracle of mushroom.

Where He’s From   Even then it mattered much  to him, how he was born  in South Carolina, raised in North.  No one asked, or cared, but he  split hairs on his right to the Palmetto  sticker stuck on his high school truck, felt his edges peeling up round  Tarheel games and low-country broils both, those people who could  answer the question in a clean cut, who didn’t need  to pick. How could he  have known it was the tension  to which his life would persistently adhere?  Wherever he is and just past  the reach of his high beams,  his soul hums in the inter- state, both there and here. 

Drywall Guy One day the pipe split like a slit vein   and the basement bathroom rained.   One day a jab saw and a coupling  made it whole again.  One day Brooke  left blank on her desk the Physics test, calculated with what force oak receives Honda Accord.     One day, then many many more, the hole was left raw-edged and open, a smashed window to the living  room floor.  Brooke’s dad lit a cigarette, said he believed a bit of mud and y ou’d reckon   never was a hole before. Said he wouldn't charge me  an arm and a leg. Said one day he’ll get much more.

Trade School Because I received my Masters in Divinity from a goldfinch bending down  to the dirt a cornstalk  like a long green finger  scratching the world’s furrowed brow. With what the maggot’s left  of his eyes the barn owl  at the roadside agreed to attend  my dissertation. I defended  how, in Chickamauga now,  the battlefield is covered  in aster, ten thousand for every fallen seed, how four doe graze  the abandoned church  whose doors will not stay closed.  At some point down the hill  my diploma flew off  the back of the bike on a wind that smelled of hay row, rain, the sweat of the big man smiling in pain as he jogged past. So you’ll either need to trust  me on this or go digging  yourself, deep into the archives.

Back to School At what level do you learn to say  two sisters, four and two,  sweat-sheened and collapsed to watch clouds on the trampoline  under the riotous pink  of a crepe myrtle?  School goes back in weeks and they'll look at me for answers, though I've told them knowing things doesn't pay well as a career, the landscape too shifting for job security. If I'm absent at the bell you'll find me here, on the porch and tending whatever thunderhead this is simmering just below the breast bone before it explodes  into a dinosaur, a ship, a joy  so like grief you could see it either way and still not quite trace out the edges  come time to point it out.

For Sale: Raised Beds For those who need a border to know  where to dump their bag of dirt and the weight of this urge  to give new life a go. For those  who itch to see earth elevated  but don’t know what to do  with seven cedar planks, forty-two  star-bit screws. With a bit  of maneuvering, the chance of a garden    fits in the back of most vehicles  cleaned out, seats down, but margins are thin. Who of us can balance  the book of our lumbering,  say for certain all we’ve spent  or what square feet of fresh start we’ve helped a stranger load?  How suddenly the yellow tape comes  whirring back, snapped shut  and pocketed before we can  mark the lasting measures.