L.R. Harvey Poetry

WAKE UP, WAKE UP If a tree that ridiculously yellow  were to net the last light of October and reel it into the evening sky, leaving me gasping for breath as I flounder from the dream,  it would not be a question of if but what it might mean.  And if beneath that tree were a dead red-headed woodpecker beside  a yellow chickadee, any late-morning doubts that something was being said  would also be laid to rest.  And if this were to occur  on the southwest corner of my house during what passes as our waking, the leaves quaking gently as a dog’s paw  giving chase to the rabbit  from his warm corner of the couch,    I have to protest that it’s not really all that out there to suggest  that the message might yet be coming  from the other side of these tangled sheets,   in dogged pursuit of our coming-to  and shaking more than our shoulders. 

  REVEAL — “Lead me, and I will be behind you right away. And I will do my best to be as brave as I can be.” — Telemachus to Odysseus Even when you, the abused beggar, are denied the scraps  from a feast which is rightfully yours,  mocked by the ones I let through the door.  Even when your army consists of nothing more than a swineherd,  a shit-shoveler, an old maid made  aware by your scar, your bruised heel. Even as you string up the unfaithful  maids of which my inner hall reels,   slack mouths hanging open to revel in the dust of our lust.   Even when you fumigate  the place, burning away the loose laughter distorting every face. Yes, even when our doubts suggest  a test, and we request you move  what has always been rooted,  the peace yet uncut,                                         even then let me walk behind you still  as you name the trees in the garden  of your father, the ones given you   to come home for, re-plant like an oar, and taste us, your fruit.

MAKING SENSE In theory, you drag into the dappled light of the driveway all the many tools you’ve gathered over the years to build a life, sweep out the inner room,  then with a six-pack for a friend  begin a rational afternoon of  setting right. In theory there are  plenty of built-in hooks  and a label-maker, so all of it  should all but categorize itself  on the proper shelf, and in the future you’ll know exactly where to go  if you need to fix a leak or where to look  if a tire’s flat. And sure enough,  the big pieces click into place neatly  as fact, and it’s not until the porch  light flicks on that you remember  how things arrived at this state in the first place, the yard scattered with odd pieces of pipe, dusty  instruction manuals, a cardboard  box of fittings that doesn’t fit  this category or that, maybe  a baseball bat. Some things  reject a hook, and theories  categorically leave us hanging,  but w hat's loose may prove the stuff you need next week to hang a ceiling f

DEVELOPMENT There was a pasture here,  j ust here off Happy Valley Road, till the fields were deemed ripe  for harvest and a flock of yellow C ats led out to graze. The farmer  willingly sold the field. 126 families will own a home starting  in the mid 200's. My own property value will go up, which I'm told is   a good thing and might really be a good thing, were I not  pretty sure we’re making for another valley that doesn’t give  a salt lick about our profits  but is entirely invested in what we've made.

RUNNING LATE Where you find the thing you were  looking for is, more often than not,  the first place you looked. Look, we’ve all rodeo-clowned around  for our keys, torn up the house,  asked a spouse before flirting   with despair, only to sheepishly admit we found them there in the pocket  of our blue jeans, the very pair  we patted down those thirty minutes back.  Or thirty years, or eighty, in fact,   if you’ve got the genes. What I mean is,  you can look all your life for what  you’ve always carried with you,  and maybe some of us have to,  peeling each surface back like a scab till we find  beneath every empty  couch cushion  nothing but a handful  of crumbs  and heaping portion   of how hungry we are  to get there.   

THE WEAVE Among the many entanglements of which our tapestry is notorious,  those inextricable knots of not dis- connected, just don’t ask me how ,  is the interplay between what is lit for us, the watching crowd,  and those shadowy shufflers  tasked with shifting the scene.  Curtain it as you will, there’s a whole cast busy back behind  things, and a bustling one at that. Some threads can’t be followed back but felt well enough, like two  sophomores, morning of opening night, making eyes across t he classroom’s great divide.  A fool’s errand to try and say  for certain exactly what is going on,  but more foolish still to deny it takes more than one to make  the very air quiver like that.

IN THE GALLEY Some of us nestle quite nicely into  crabbiness. Hell, somebody needs to  tell the deck that actually no,  not everyone is just doing their best,  and yes, chin up buttercup and all that jazz, but too much green  grass and things start to smell, well,  fishy . Every vessel needs a cook  to shoot it straight, to tell us that since we’re all gasping for breath by fifty,  will never surface from our bills,  and if the air doesn’t kill us  the Big Man's flat paddle will,  we might as well come below deck for a Tuesday beer. Cheers.  No really, C heers . Down here, despair is stale  fare. When you’ve drained the cup  and found that no one slips   the hook, you’re finally free to stop  flopping around as you look for another dry morsel, feasting instead  in the company of those  who don’t ask you to choose  between being completely and utterly  screwed, and all of it—if not tonight—maybe yet coming out right. Take and eat. Some dishes are best slopped on a single plate.

SPLINTERS You’re not alone. All of us pick up one somewhere in these tall grasses  we wander through, scratching us like a bur beneath a pant leg  or the proverbial pebble at the sole of things.  Regardless how beautiful the view we’re making for, how grateful we are—don’t get us wrong—to be trekking toward the precipice  in the company of friends, still, that bit of dust in your eyeball makes no amends. In theory,  it's the one thing between you and a really lovely stroll through unmowed existence. In theory,  were there a good, flat rock to rest on  and some time to boot, you could  begin unlacing the layers to uncover the root of this chafing and clip it  like a hangnail. But don’t hang your hat on it. If such nagging delusions have begun to set in,  the source of the infection has long since sunk beneath the skin.

HANGRY If the answer sashays in on a silver  platter, tidy as an hors d'oeuvres served in a little crinkled cup  and garnished with a sprig of rosemary or a strawberry slice, nice , though it’s a safe bet that  the question isn’t getting at  the meat of the matter, which  even now is being prepared behind  those heavy, swinging doors for those with a reservation, or—funny enough— without reservation enough to demand what's really going on back there this many- an-hour, declining  the establishment's arsenal of black- tied offers of a little something to dull the edge and placate the growl.

CLEANING Dizzying thing about days is how they exist in a vacuum, the present hopelessly wrapped around  the spinning spool like pet hair whirling in perpetuity. But then, no doubt the bag grows heavier  with every pass, confirming  our suspicion that yesterday did ,  in fact, come to pass, if at the last  so much dust. And equally sure is that somewhere at the far end of the room the cord will soon grow tight like a chest,  suddenly yanking from the wall  to drench everything in an uncanny  still. Still, on this drab October Tuesday  in the living room, hope  scoots stubbornly along in front  of things, refusing to be sucked up.