L.R. Harvey Poetry

In Search of the Lettuce Bird The official version harps its non- existence, but the official version has always been the inversion of a fish, meaning it doesn’t hold  together or swim in deep waters but stinks of decay and is best used  to attract alleycats or say  to children, “Look: here is why  you must forever dodge the hook.” I am not an alleycat or interested  in official versions, though still feel  a deep attachment to the innards of the commonplace earth,  which of course is not commonplace  at all, which of course is the main  point of this lecture where the teacher forgot the pointer but makes the point to gesture haphazardly around saying “see? Sea ? See? ”  It’s all a matter of this nattering  mattering . I offered a sparrow once  whatever weight my word was worth to hold my tongue if he loosed his  and shared the perfumed fringe of his most secret thought. I would have  bumbled in answer, Yes, I half- g...

Forklift Pushing my cart of quarter-round  which I will later mis-measure  and come clattering back for a second chance at making the cut,  they unwound the accordion  fence to fend off the register,  accord the man in the orange vest and the empty nameplate the space to make music behind  the controls. To take such a bulk  and not simply lift it but whirl it round like a pressure-treated planet  in the cramped space of our being here, wheels skirting calamity  of candy rack and looming stack of plywood by less than the width of  a breath, may I forever quiver as one  star-bit, finding no words to serve as a protective gloss to cover  this daily display of wonder  beyond the grinning admission  of the woman at the fence, seeing my loss:   “That’s why he’s the boss.”

Remains Even when what was once wild, leafy,  unashamedly ungeometric, has been  bored out and planed down to fit neatly  on a hardware rack; even when  sap has been so unceremoniously sucked by steel, empty pores pressure-treated with a poison so green it won’t even let death cross the street, lingering live edges spray-painted purple and cursed  to the discount hell of what won’t  sell; even after such big-box  bastardization, such gear-gilled gutting of what once lifted the light in irreplicable fractals  of leaf-shimmer and shadow,   the fire is undeterred, embering all  the same. Yes, even when all we've left to offer is scraps and loose ends dumped callously as this, praise: that's real heat, a real flame.

Waiting   — for … And just like that it is today  again, and I am holding her this tenderly  not because I know how soft t he quivering crown of morning’s scalp, but because I have a splinter from shirking my work gloves as I tried to raise what’s sturdy  enough to shed time, to reach back and uncrinkle the tossed out blueprint of tomorrow. Remember  me not for this dreamer’s endeavor, how half-awake you found me  stumbling through the moment, through  every moment, but rather for how resilient  I proved in my forgetting, like a man with dementia  re-reading the book, delightfully  surprised again, again, again at how the sting of these invisible slivers loosens our grip enough to cradle  even the hope of breath itself.

Learning the Rules Then just when you slip into the bright thought that you might have drawn the card that lets you skip the dark square and remain in the game till it's time to pack it back into the box, it’s suddenly the friend of a friend or the freshman when you were a senior,  an old teammate’s little sister whose name you’re closing in on  like a noose. Did the neighbor's dog s lip his collar again? What is that incessant snuffling under the door ?  And does the pamphlet we lost say anywhere just how many times we get to point and say okay, it’s your turn                          till it’s not anymore? 

Raised Beds  It takes seven cedar planks,  forty-two star-bit screws, impact driver and chop saw, two  pressure-treated 2x4’s, table  saw if you hope to rip trim: all this  to lift the earth three feet closer to heaven. Best for those with bad  backs, neat freaks, or anyone who needs a border to help know what to do  with their bag of dirt and the weight of this urge to give new life a go. At checkout, who can say what the sum of all this lumbering  will cost us, or in the green just how many chances of a garden we’ll help a stranger load by the time the season closes like an account, b ut when the yellow tape  comes whirring back, snapped shut a nd pocketed, let this be the only lasting measure.