L.R. Harvey Poetry

A FEW LINES In mostly pleasant places, these boundary lines of mine,  if increasingly, of late, showing more true  t o their root— to bind— than, say, to bound, like a deer, if you catch what I'm nosing toward here.  You get the gist: never more sure it’s the other hue you want  than after this one’s on the wall, the last exit glistening with clean rest rooms a quarter-mile past the sign. Just another voice joining the bawl of the neighborhood dogs  checking out each other's digs at the end of the drive, collars uncharged and tethered to a freedom we can't escape from.

ABUNDANCE Another strain of suffering—if less  definitive and not prone to bear much sympathy—is the weight of late  summer, tomatoes yet heavy  on the vine and the light  so long it sags from the sky  to brush dew off the grass.  We chop chutneys and pickle  everything we can, though of course we can't preserve this flavor   when the Big Chill comes, which we have lived long enough  to know is sure in coming  even to soil this far south.  Strange, but when the fruits  of our loved ones in northern climes  are even now falling from the vine and ours no less deserving,  it hurts to have enough. Given that certain harvests  rot in transport and can't be shared, what t o do with this gift of extra  time than thin slice our thanks,  pray for a sliver of their strength  to meet the wind when it blows  down the garden gate, then pass the salt         ...

FORTH Even the best vehicles on offer here are notably high mileage. Even the best  vehicles we’ve here available acquire  a clank none too far from the lot, boast a tear in the seat cover, assorted  recalls. Of course, if you recall  what you’re here for—namely, not  a place to lay your head but just the ol’  A-to-B, something to carry you back  and forth to wherever you’re going— there’s plenty that will suffice,  and all the more so as you near  your destination only to discover  that half of these equations won’t even be necessary.   

NITROGEN AND OTHER DEFICIENCIES In the dream the nodules were white  as bone, meaning not much  would grow in this deficiency.  In the dream the white nodules  around the taproot of the hairy vetch  made it clear that very little would grow  here as things stood. We understood as much in the dream, until—as it  seemed—a hand released us from this death- grip on our cover-crop of despair, broke open the nodules like a skull  to show the pink that was really  there. We rejoiced at what was sure  in coming. This, of course, only after  the breaking, the becoming, the waking.

SELF-DIAGNOSIS The chief symptom is a persistent bout of imposter syndrome,  more often than not paired  with a chronic inability to differentiate  what you want from what you want to want. Easy enough to identify,  but still remarkably difficult to diagnose  due to the confusion that incurs when the nurse calls your name  to bring you back from the waiting room and deliver the news. Nobody  moves. You look around. Who ?

THE UMPIRE It is, from where he sees it, the right call. In fact, every call is right from where he sees it, because—as he is fond of telling coaches—he calls it how he sees it. Recalling the right gesture for the judgement, the fitting word, is simple enough. The real game is in finding the right angle to watch it all unfold, and this before the dust is kicked   thick in the air, making it hard not just to see but to breathe. But easier said than done, this ripping off of the mask to shift into truer perspective, and all the more so beneath this oppressive sun,  in late innings, and wearing this  clunky suit, which he's sure that we, of all people, could understand.  

CHICKAMAUGA BATTLEFIELD Saturday night the doe brought her fawn, two  days old at most, across the pine woods to graze beneath the apple tree.  He tottered like a spotted whisper, tried his tongue to June’s first, small windfall,  then caught me pigeon-toeing for a better look. Spooked, the doe ran right, disappearing  through a gap in the blackberry  hedge. The fawn hesitated, then left.  Sunday after church we found him  in the middle of the field, not yet stiff  but breath stilled. No bite marks, just lost, presumably, then heat stroke.  We told Emmie he was sleeping,  ushered her inside for a nap  while I buried him beneath the oak tree with the rest of the napping  contingent there—a pair of baby bunnies,  a bluebird, a bat, thousands of cicada  corpse—and two small flowers  from the bed Emmie planted in April and we’ve kept alive  by water bills and will. Dirt tamped, I biked the battlefield to cl...

ABSENCE Because no better way to recognize  how bare the porcelain of our plates  than an empty place at table,  no more certain tell that  the problem won’t be solved by the bell  than a desk, seventh period,  waiting like an open mouth  feeling for a question. Of course,  no purer plunk than first blueberry at the bottom of the bucket,  no truer thirst than the one  that ached us home across the vast asphalt of the cul-de-sac when the games were finished  and all the bikes clicked into gear.  And then, how many of us here— were we to tell it like it is—can’t quite  attest to what divine presence  feels like, but know for certain that something kept calling us back to the hollow at the trunk of the butterfly bush or beneath the stairs, that little nook in the warmth of whose emptiness was the fullest we’ve ever felt?

TAKING STOCK AT 30 Between the folder labeled Diminishing Portfolio of Exceptional  Experience, the bursting manila of dreams  penned in red crayon Another Life ,   and in the back a plat map showing  boundaries which, i f by no means cramped,  are neither too expansive,  there’s a three-ring-binder  stuffed with a record of ordinary  occurrence on extra ordinary days, a hodge-podge catching all like the corner chair in a bedroom or the kitchen junk drawer, the assortment filed under the only heading expansive enough for it all: Hallelujah !

PROPERTY LINE And so, having taken from them the soil and given only clay  in return, returning every year  come whatever meager harvest  they still managed to grow to reap the fat portion as payment to re-pave a road going somewhere they never wanted to go, and leaving them just this yard, a shrinking soul, and any semblance of control they can yet convince themselves  they still retain, who then is to blame  if they—another way of saying we— walk out in our bathrobes to watch each other mow the middle strip or post a fence? It’s not to be that neighbor. I t's just that there are stakes here, and far more than a few feet on the line.