L.R. Harvey Poetry

 AFTER SCOTT CAIRNS:  ANOTHER LACUNA As but one of many made in the image of One both numberless and imageless, pardon the perpetual look of puzzlement seared on my face, or if not my face somewhere beneath it. Perplexity—our one common  inheritance—is in these very bones. But make no bones about it: there are worse things than wondering, eyes doubly dazed in the glare of our immense littleness. It’s an awkward space  to inhabit, space dust that also happens to be the center of the universe,  but even a blind squirrel sometimes happens upon a hazelnut.  

DUPLICATE Shocker: the deceivers continue to up their game. Late afternoons when our guards are down,  and each looks largely the same in official-looking insignia, stamped URGENT or even IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED . To throw away the whole of them would invite some form of consequence—both foolish  and impossible to give them all  their due regard. Here is but another front  of the long war, a slow, meticulous  opening the only trick to discern the real from the front. 

WISDOM OF THE COPY MACHINE There’s quite a crowd of us, and we've a limited supply of ink. Don't overthink it:  let’s each make just enough for today,  then come back, say,  tomorrow, sipping our coffee as we take it from the  top.

COLD SHOWER This morning, again,  a small rebellion,  a stroke upstream.  Again, this morning, not so much a stick  in the spokes  of the machine  as a playing  card, so at least  you hear it coming. Goose- flesh, brief quickening of breath—nothing  more than this,  amen, and once  again tomorrow.

BACK AND FORTH            — "one could do worse than be a swinger of birches." — Robert Frost Where we live in rural North Georgia,  that the city of Chattanooga Tennessee is less than ten miles away does not affect the local day-  to-day. To hear the lady at the Food Lion tell it, her visit to the destination of my twenty-minute commute all but required a passport. Still, other than the complications  of tax season and answering someone  not from here who asks where I'm from, it's best this way: prone as I am to drag my feet on the way out the door, blurry-eyed and not all that aware, the more frequent the road-signs and other reminders of living in the inter- state between two worlds the better.   

"RUSTIC LIVING, ELEGANT LIFESTYLES" Not long ago there was nothing  here but a few farmers and their smattering of cows dreaming of nothing but here. Today we leave our rental  cabin to piddle round Pigeon  Forge, perusing numbered exits pushing innumerable signs for  storefronts offering any number of wood-tone toys with our own names on them in infinite variations  of font. In the face of such a  mass-produced affront, can you  blame us the paralysis that ensued?  We stood there like so many  cows, spirits working  to extract whatever nutrients is left  in our regurgitated cud,  hungrier even than before we vomited after gorging ourselves.

MAPS It’s not for lack of them available to the public: in various vehicles   they sit in stacks by the door at corner stores, state lines, and other thresholds, collecting dust but free for taking. They’re even—at least  regarding the long questions—more or less up-do-date, in that the inter- state scars are carved so deep that a name-change here or there doesn’t necessitate a reprint. We still get  to where we tell ourselves we want  to go, and quicker than before.  No, our chronic lostness is not for  lack of them. If we can’t seem  to arrive at where we need to be,  it may mean puzzling our inability to decipher direction in lines that speak in a cadence too fine for animatronic voice, then slow down enough to unravel the answer we're looking for right in our laps.

SOMEWHERE IN ASHEVILLE Other than how  the characteristic hair-pins and low- shoulder switch- backs serve to  map something  in you equally  slow and relentless,  mountain roads  are also good for losing things:  cell service, first,  followed by  your certainty  that the trees  are just metaphorically watching, then  even—stay long enough— your way, much  the way this parabolic faith of ours or a long,  winding sentence funnels you through its dark arteries  to the heart of an overpass  you would never  have considered venturing to see, but—on looking back—is clearly  the one place you  needed to be.

SOLVE FOR WHY As with most problems, best begin  in the middle, or the end.  X is given here—your pending  death, then any number of variables  you might plug in before you run out of space on the horizontal plane. Ouch. Of course, that’s half the equation,  so don’t put your pencil down.   To answer the question requires that  you interrogate the Y component.  It’s an act of trial, error,  more trial,       and then a bit more.

TINNITUS AND THE MANY UNNAMED Some pulled the job of descending  in fire, offering heavenly condolences  to some poor schmuck fallen face-down  in dust. Others pull children  from cars and all that classic stuff you genuinely want to believe if  it weren’t for the questionable source of your aunt, who was—bless her soul— sole witness. Of course,  if there are legions there are others as well who deserve a pour, so here’s  to the many faithful whose work  will never be acknowledged as anything  other than the way of things:  Tinnitus, whose ceaseless ringing  of his silver bell tunes his chosen  to the still, small voice forever running beneath the discord; the night shift, waging their tireless war against the logical  interpretation of things, those little avant garde chefs of the unconscious handing up their delicacies on odd-shaped platters;  and even—as much as they annoy me  in such matters—here's, too, to ...

TOWARDS A BETTER TREE Nice, every now and then, to see a fellow acorn-brain making  the right decision. Encouraging  to watch him pause, considering  the low rumble in his chest  and what it might mean, how best to interpret the enigmatic lines  running perpendicular to his short line of sight and unfolding forever beyond it. Good to see him give the signs their due regard, and—despite a flinch or two—repent, turning to run with the road wherever it may take him to whatever tree he'll then be tasked to climb.

THINGS, THINGS, THINGS Like a seal breaking the surface, the object itself emerges in all its objective absurdity, looks around a minute, then disappears down  where the real things dwell,  even the wrinkle  smoothed over in interpretation.

MY GOD, MIND GOD Sending thoughts up there to peer over  the mountain’s rim,  the thought climbed upwards, set itself on a pedestal,  and calcifying became a golden calf.  The mountain rumbles.  Better melt it down for the tabernacle and hope that's a laugh.

AIN'T NOTHIN' NEW Have something  original to say?  Save yourself,  and us. Say  instead the old  stuff which can’t be said  enough, or can’t  be said. Join the rest of us  in this, our perennial circling of the abyss,  sustained by nibbling on whatever scraps  the deep sends up from the ground we sound.  There’s always  room for more. It’s a hungry life,  sure, but at least you’re  keenly aware of a hole there,  both feeding you  and demanding you submit your-                               self to becoming, wholly, the very food.