L.R. Harvey Poetry

Invisible Fence The weatherman did not account  for how cicada chirrups  raise the forecast of extreme heat another ten degrees, and I did not account  for how long Georgia clay retains the rain  when I told Wayne at Dependo Rent-All we needed the Ditch Witch  just four hours. Every twenty feet  or so we stopped and Dad  used the broken handle of a hoe to clear  the blades of clay. We’d blink  the sting of salt away and sip  a High Noon while eyeing what’s left  of the acreage, then trade  and drag another stretch. It was a day,  and looking back a good one, accounting  for how the smallest chink in the circuit  shuts the whole thing down and we lose what we always thought  would be there, invisible  as a bluetick reclining on the welcome mat.

After the Screened-in Porch     "when a man goes out to fight for the truth he should never wear his best pants."  What he knows now about tiling  is that sparks flying from the whir of a wet saw means it's plumb out of water, if you happen to be a fan of firm ground mix the thin-set anything but thin, and best do it with a little brother while the two of you float  the tenor to “A King is Coming to Town,” sure it sets right before Sunday’s Christmas  choir. What he knows now about raising daughters, how to bear   with a friend the unbearable weight of cradled air, how  to square the bend of his thoughts  before they’re too stiff  to shift? Again, just odds and chipped ends, so he has no plans of getting out of here anything less than covered in the stuff.

Repair is the Endless Possibility He double-checked the main was off but forgot how snakes will thrash  for minutes after shoveling off  their heads, how docs insist to remind you the strep will slither back if you hack short the antibiotic. So when he spent his Sabbath in the nook beneath the cupboard,  he swapped the dishwasher’s pump  just fine, but there was still water  enough in the line between  the main and the sink to flood  the kitchen while he labored  at the source. He emerged as one rejoicing not to scrub the dishes anymore,  his towel now free to tackle the floor.

The Tinkerer Works on Himself No taste for cucumber, squash,  but he sows a handful each March  to see if he can train himself  up a trellis, as if maybe  it’s as simple as you just start  doing the type of things  the person you want to be  does. Like maybe smiling  is the best way to become  one of those approachable people,  or not talking so much a sure step toward the contemplative  type. But then, come every July,  he remembers he forgot again to label the seeds of the self he is and the one he'd like to be, finds a thatch of vine so thick he can’t track back   which is which.

  Is it True?  Every year an undercooked batch of sophomores, every year the same  stale questions hurled like boulders  at the unkempt dingy floating round the whiteboard: was Odysseus  real? Okay but did Beowulf  really ? Yeah but how do we know?  It’s the facts they’re after, those little pebbles they like to fill  their pockets with to make sure  they don’t float away between bells, and hell  I guess it makes sense because they haven’t  been to many weddings yet,  watched the fact of two smiling stories come crashing  together to form not just a third  but the title character of every one  to come, haven’t yet seen  how at a wedding, even though really no one cares for dates  unless you’re stopped up  and eat them as a kind of medicine,   they can become a small part  of something wondrous delivered on a silver platter by a guy  dressed in white. What’s that?  Sure, tru...

Beyond the Tinkerer’s Purview  But then, despite his swelling shed of tailored tools and know- how, there’s all the shattered things to which he brings  just two eyes like liquid nails  to a job with no backing  to bond, useful as the guy  who turns off the water for the plumber then sits by  crunching little peanuts of small talk about the Braves.     Like lunch with the student  stirred to pour out what’s backed up  since dad’s slow-drip descent  to the guest room, or the way he cannot stop the light  from revealing to his kids  all the painted-over places.  And then that breaking news, the one about the next-door town  on the other end of the world  who lost its daughters to the blast of an errant missile. He went home  and tore up his shed but there was nothing he could find to twist a nut  on the live wire of such  a severing, no one to teach him how to put a declarative end-poi...