L.R. Harvey Poetry

AN EARLY LESSON The dark was big and cold,  so my father laid the ground to build  a fire pit, spread gravel down  to carve a space in the yard about  the size of a living room, a life. In older cousins’ coats we’d sit  in plastic chairs, clink pebbles  off the grate while he split logs he picked up from the curb  of a neighbor’s house. We were wealthy in woodsmoke, sweet tooth-squeak of an uncooked marshmallow, talk of church  beneath the temple of the oak tree. He’d get up periodically, knees popping   to preach to us—not saying anything— how it's nothing less than  breath to keep a flame going.

RESURRECTION ALTERNATIVE If I’m wrong, and it’s just dust we’re after, I’d like to request—forgive me:  old habits, like hopes, die hard—to rise a clover on the eastern side  of a low hill of strawberries, not expected to grow anything or feed anyone but simply tasked to tilt towards the light and do my bit to frame the feast, dew-blessing fingers as they peel back a shroud to shout, look at this one! Ripe earth is all I'd hoped of heaven anyway.

DRIVEWAY PRAYER She tends to orient her pig-tails towards the more elusive things: bubbles on an April breeze, leaves scraping down warm cement, the dog bent  low and mischievous, a jelly-sandal in his jaws. It bothers her little how little she has to show for these pursuits, how slow she pivots when changing direction,  how fast her vision veers for chirping birds, airplanes, any suggestion of the word M-A-M-A. Question:  say she were to find it, whatever it is she’s after—what then? Once the dog caught a squirrel, lame in its left leg, and they lay  there looking at each other  in mutual disappointment. If she were to find you, Lord, as something other than the faint gleam  of a bubble barely visible over  the tree-line—that is to say, if she were to grow tired of chasing and grab  you with her tiny hands—pop, please, and sprinkle her face  with blessing, that she might turn her eyes upwards, asking—again—for more.