L.R. Harvey Poetry

THAT MORNING That morning, when you wake to find that something irreversible has happened while you slept, and the world  which once safely inhabited  the middle distance is now both  small enough to drop into a purse  with a metallic clink and so beyond   measure that were the stars to sink their teeth into you it wouldn’t  make a difference—when you can’t decide if the whole gosh-darned point  is that it’s all so deadly serious or if instead we’re balanced on the silent edge of a great joke’s turn, and all you can do is focus all your attention on  your next breath because neither laughing  or crying seems an appropriate response— when the sounds of morning are replaced by the echo of their voices  telling you it’s not that big a deal ,  and you can’t help but feel  that maybe they’ve been right all along, but if they’ve been right all along  there’s nothing left to do but kill  yourself, or them—when it all...

HALFWAY HOUSE ON ST. ELMO AVE Observe that the halfway house is—as are its many inhabitants—in various stages  of disrepair. Impossible to dodge  the smell, the sagging roof. Aloof,  I needn’t tell you that  as with any halfway house its mere existence ought to rouse  within the neighborhood at least  a half-hearted effort at amelioration, part  lamentation part philanthropic endeavor.  Whatever. Look at our bodies, the earth:  when have we ever altered course on behalf of the passing-places?

DISCOVERING WHAT’S AT STAKE When I hear the hollow thump of their boots on the front porch, and that night at last arrives when they bang on my door with the butt of their torches,  an eager light in their eyes  as they regret to inform me  that it’s my turn to be cinched to the stake, the one that— yes, I know —I picked  myself to die upon, may my tongue melt  before I can scream out  for mercy. Let it flare up bright enough that—if for a moment and from afar—some restless pilgrim  mistakes it for a star and packs a bag, at last arriving   to the long road home.

8th DAY  In this our perpetual Thursday,  who’s to blame us if we get a bit, say,  antsy ? Time shuffles like a colony  of lepers limping towards…what are we looking forward to? Something like the week- end, surely, or maybe a Sunday evening meal  but with a bit more meat on it that we can really sink our teeth into.

SUNRISE THIS MORNING Every now and then it’s good practice to pause long enough to re-mind yourself that you've never really seen the sun rise over morning coffee. We're  the ones turning here. Stability's a set. Feel that?  You can’t, of course,  sustain this perspective for long— you’ve a job and/or family to maintain,  and perpetual vertigo doesn’t lend itself to a balanced lifestyle. Still,  for a moment consider how effortless this ability to believe that we're the rooted factor, this penchant for projecting all variability outwards, or even— in this case— up . B efore you stumble off to wherever you’re going,  turning your face away from the warm stare which —as it turns out—never blinks, think about how this changes things (or doesn't). Among other things, I guess that's up to you.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH IS A SIMPLE DOG  Turns out, when the dog gets out he doesn't get the chickens, just outs them from a mindless afternoon  of perpetual pecking  for worms and other scraps among the wood chips.  He’s a hound, and plenty quick  for their flightless wings and jurassic gait—foragers make easy bait. Instead, he simply buzzes them a bit, like a sparrow to an uninvited guest trimming too close to the nest. They flutter off a couple yards, clucking in brief distress before resuming their perennial search for provisions. He sits to watch— parental almost—until called back inside. He's a simple dog: all he wants is to ruffle our feathers  into noticing how delicious this late Summer light,  how indulgent whatever light  morsels we happen upon,  roused suddenly into tasting them again.

BEFORE THE SYMPHONY As but one amongst the clamorous cacophony of ding-dongs in this raucous  clusterfuck, please hear me  from somewhere in the back of the tenor section when I say—with all due respect for my fellow reed-rubbers and the rest of you in the thick of it— could you all just can-it for a bit?  Hard enough, as is, to tune oneself to the steady note coursing beneath the discord without all of you chording in my ear. Do we even know what signature we’re in? It’s times like this  our years of theory stutter, fail us.  Among other things, what we need here  is a little quiet. Any time now, disheveled master- mind! Step through the door, able— dear Lord —to salvage this babel into something resembling harmony, and even —when the curtain crumples—the song so big we were nearly too afraid to let ourselves imagine ourselves a part.

WRITING, SATURDAY MORNING “the owl and the hedgehog / shall lodge in her capitals.” —Zeph. 2:14 Even the “O” in “Owl,” then, might harbor one, chin  tucked like an oversized chestnut  or perched in the capital’s crook as if it were a hollow in a tree.  This complicates the dialect, you see,  when even the “T” that inaugurates this sentence might serve as lookout post for eyes which pry the dark,  some enigma we’ll never crack with our tender hands, our minds.  If so, what else might we find havening in our word-hollows if we sat long enough that they trusted us,  revealed themselves? Who else?

ONE MORE DAY In the morning she whimpers behind the closed door  of the nursery, caged in her crib. Not rage  or fear of abandonment,  because until this point  someone’s always come  to lift her from beneath the arms,  so call it more a prayer  that this happen sooner  than later, with here and there maybe a hint of that fear of abandonment,  because who’s to say  today won’t be the day  the magic runs thin?  Imagine the excitement,  then, when she hears  the hiss of callused feet, the floor- board creak? Or really, why imagine,  when you know all too-well  how it feels for something  inside you to be pressed against the thin bars of your ribs, straining to hear your name even whispered, or just one more glimpse of a shadow beneath the door.

CATCHING UP If on a Wednesday, say—call it mid- afternoon, late September— you were suddenly to be over- taken by a vague sense of dis- jointedness, as if you’d misplaced something of central importance— like your car keys, maybe, or a purse—  you’ll be glad to find you haven’t lost  your mind. This sense is a common  occurrence among those who are— as you are—perpetually a bit scatter- brained beneath the clock’s demanding hands.  Unfortunately, rifling through your pockets or retracing your steps up the slopes of the parking garage won’t recover what you’re really looking for.   You left it behind way further back than you "could have sworn,”  and it’s not the sort of thing  that just shows up in a backpack.   In fact, in this scenario, your best bet might actually be—the way your parents  drilled you to do if you ever got lost at the county fair—staying put until it comes to you. Still, souls  are slow things. As anyone wit...

THE LINE OF THINKING The line of thinking runs  that given time enough—the funds— we might yet get in front of this.  That one day honey just does the list, and lo, the fixer-upper’s up and fixed,  the lawn at last trimmed low and all the laundry done, so give  it but a week or so and we'll at last begin to live the life we always imagined as something more than a growing list of pending repairs.  Of course, all this will come to pass only after the ballots are cast, the offices swept and emptied out  for our officials, who will, no doubt,  enact our will and set right the deluded line of thinking we’ve too long been governed by. Then once the baby sleeps through the night— or say instead the baby graduates and vacates the house—that will be our ticket to kick up our feet the way we've dreamed about and somehow come to expect, when we’ll rest as deep and long as Orion in repose, belt unclipped and bow leaned back in that ever-elusive posture of "rel...