L.R. Harvey Poetry

EVE DROPPINGS What we have here is a poor  rendition of murmurings  scrapped from the strip of light beneath the door.  Was "leaving" the word? A going  away? Are we going to stay ? What other world  are we whispering toward? 

ABSENCE You’re not crazy; there’s an emptiness  here so thick you can feel it  when it connects with a stout right hook below the jaw. Yes,  that’s real blood in your mouth!  But after you spit it out,  you’re also not insane if you make  yourself stumble back into the ring: there’s always waters  for hovering over.

AT BEST A JAR OF LIGHTNING BUGS Most flew well beyond the hope we fleshed as fingers flashing out, but with a shout we caught a few, held up the Mason jar to watch them  limp around the bottom edge  as if they too were circling the thing we were really hoping to catch: something like sum total  of evening field, still lake, the ache they combine to ignite for a light even longer than summer.  At my elbow she asked why they were bent  like that and I told her about  the way we have of winging the very flicker we’re hungry to preserve.  We watched them burn a minute, the steam of our breath veiling the glass, then tapped them free on the grass and didn’t clutch for another word. 

SUGGESTIVE SHELTERS So you’ve set out to construct a house on top of the mountain you imagine will offer the perfect view  of the horizon you fell in love with  when you were driving through  here some years back. It wakened  something that you can’t seem to shake,  and at nights you’d lie awake  and imagine a place where you could  hold it, call it your own, be something  more than just another visitor given just a passing glimpse.  You agonize over plans, materials,  design, and then finally it’s time, and you step out on the front porch only to find that from this vantage point it’s barely the same sky  you saw once, and even back on the road there’s now a new roof-line eclipsing  the view. It’s clear: there’s a gap  between what you envisioned and what you have here, and since  you’re now more certain than ever that what you saw back then was true, and your failure to encapsulate it a kind of backwards testament t...

SHARED SPACE The neighbor at our back mows  most of our yard because that’s how  he always did it when his in-laws lived here  and then his nephew, totaling  forty-seven years, which is about how old  his daughter is who lives at the front  of the field. And while I’d like to ask  her to slow down when she drives  up our driveway to visit her parents,   I want to be sensitive to the fact  that the field lines from our septic tank  cross the property line and she hasn’t asked us to dig them out,  and I can’t argue that the old man's chronic mowing has its real perks.  Sometimes I imagine how nice  it would be to do whatever I want wherever on my property I want to without needing to think  about how it will affect anyone but me and mine. Other times,  I’m grateful that this common field won't participate in the deception that anyone has this luxury.

OLD OAK There is no other coast calling, no there to make clear what here   is missing and offer it. What he has he has  or waits to be given: light,  water, and a good view  to watch the scurry  carry on below  as we scrape to pull up  our roots and re-pot them in whatever soil we hope will make us  grow like he did.

FUEL Among the ranks of our many  puzzles left seemingly without a piece  stands the common occurrence of twin gas stations, twenty yards apart  and each offering the juice we need to get where we’re going, if one charging 12 cents more  for it. A different fuel, perhaps?  Is the owner not actually the one  in charge? And then the bigger question is why despite the disparity  it’s still full of cars full of you and me, more than willing  to spend a little more if we can go a little faster to somewhere we soon want to leave.

Rabbiting ​​Instinctive, even, this knowing that most of the tender stuff we push  into the world won’t make it far,  so can you blame us if we stash it away in a thatch of tall grass or wrapped  in willow leaves beneath a pallet  leaned against the side of a white fence?   And most days we find ourselves once again right, our womb-work  carried off squeaking into the night, held  in the clutch of claws just searching for something soft to squeeze. But sometimes, as made clear by the sheer abundance littering the field this evening, we’re all too pleased to be  wrong, and something for which we labored  somehow slipped away beyond even the suffocating grip  of our most directive instincts, furrowing off to burrow in  the fertile dark of some fern-thick forest,  where even now it goes on making, making, making

TOUCH-STONES OF DISORIENTATION You needn't break your back with a sack- full.  Just keep a few tried-and-true  near at hand, like maybe on the night- stand where you can reach them  when the wheat fields still and the clay begins to set. Anything will do, but your best bet is whatever proves true to the trick of shaking up the sediment thickening the bottom of the cup,  the way you once clamored for quarters as the merry-go-round wound down.  Touch them when the heart-stones settle and the vertigo subsides till you whirl back on the ride. 

RIDE IT OUT Could be nothing more than  stubborn indigestion,  but if there's still a question you can quell any doubts  if it dissipates with an antacid and an hour’s rest. But if  the cramping in your chest  persists well beyond the fix  you reach for in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror till you begin to suspect that this might be a symptom  of something more serious, maybe even a chronic condition,  let me first confirm your suspicion and then suggest this ache might actually be your pass- port out of here. If so—contrary to modern medicine and even more so as we draw ever near the border— don't lose it.

CLASS OF 2024 AND OTHER ETHEREAL THINGS After graduation night, hors d'oeuvre plates heaped with well-intentioned  lies about keeping in touch,  the dog left a baby bunny  on the front porch. I carried it  in the shallow hollow of a shovel,  tucked it in dirt beneath the oak tree  next to the bluebird and the bat.  When I came back he’d snatched  another one from some unseen nest. I held it a moment. It was shocked and breathing fast. It’s a shivering thing, the moment,  and one too wild to bring inside and raise it as our own.  Maybe the best we can ask  is that it live to see another day,  and then a quiet front-porch view  to watch it slip away  beneath the blackberry hedge. 

CICADA SONG — for my sophomores; stay “wise fools” foreve r Impossible to ignore you this time of year, cicadas  and seniors. Roughly seventeen  years to prepare and then suddenly  you’re there, red-eyed and hungry for wings if only keenly aware  that everything else is hungry too and likes the taste of you.  No expert here, but survival  seems to entail finding a firm tree  to cling to, a willingness  to vanish into a song far bigger than  the single note of a self, and then,  eventually, a slow emergence as you leave behind your hollow shell,  joining the rest of us as we make  our lilting way to light,  the old world both haunted  and hallowed with our husks.

AGAINST THE GRAIN The room addition transitions  from hardwood to vinyl  plank without a lip, silent  as most stutter-worthy  thresholds prove to be in our brief trip across the living room, which is a momentary stop on this tedious tour where we are politely implored to ogle the collection of knick- knacks tacked on the wall, note the fresh coat of paint,  till with a glance against the grain we chance to look down to discover that somewhere the very ground was changed.