L.R. Harvey Poetry

HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD Among the many dialects I’ve yet  to acquire is that of old men by the mailbox  while the county lays a sewer line.  Studies have shown that if you take  a data set of rats and raise them  in isolated chambers before  caging them together, they will  develop a means of communication  all their own. Of course, who knows  who funds these studies or runs the lab, which is why the old men gather around the mailbox, knowing that in a world this beyond our control  maybe the bravest thing we can do  is walk down the driveway and talk  about it, right under the nose  of the developers and in a language  they forced on us and could never understand.

HOW IT ALL WORKS It was not quite a tray of brownies or a casserole, but what it was  was layered and laid out in front of me like cornbread, or a sheet cake.  And then, as if it had been over- baked, the base began to break  apart, jagged edges drifting apart    and busting through the boundary of the pan like Pangea. I’m not asking you to understand,  but I knew in the way a dreamer knows  that what was here before me  was indivisible: bedrock covered by the Bermuda, hardwood beneath the vinyl floor, and more—when  I picked it up to find it edible— that the dish was dense, rich,  and a remarkably simple recipe  with just a few key ingredients  for which I'd spend the rest of my life mapping the waking words.

HOSPICE No one is arguing the diagnosis  of Sick . The symptoms have grown  impossible to ignore. The baby finds  a piece of candy on the floor and eats the engorged tick that dropped from the dog. At some point the fog lifts on the valley of the doe’s eye  hollowed out by soldier fly, a tangle  of intestines blocking the shoulder  where we would go to change a tire  if we weren’t also out of gas.  There is silence in the waiting room  when the doctor asks if anyone wants to put up a fight that the world is right.  We passed that exit miles back and threw our trash out the window. The talk now is about  how to ease the panting chest, how best to hold the bony hand and make something worthwhile of this waning light.

A-to-B Good news is that every vehicle  comes with an old one  crumpled in the glove box, but there's no red star to make clear You A re Here. What it offers is a survey of the scene, complete with county lines, freeways, and other scars that remain  more or less unchanging with time.  The gnarled tree , the old mill, the places  that place us in-between are ours to find. W e might even drop a tentative pin, and then another, and given what may be a lifetime pulled over on the side of the road, receive from the cup- holder the pen and begin the slow work  of mapping the winding route between the two

WORSHIP ON THE SPECTRUM Running out of the grave probably looks a lot like that, actually,  arms akimbo like you’re ripping  through the cobwebs of that tireless black spider.  And what is real freedom if not  the gall to raise your hand  and scratch your armpit on the front row, to tug at your crotch like a slot machine and not once   look over your shoulder?  The seraphim circle the throne singing holy holy holy , and  the other seraphim, who  don’t pick up on social cues, laugh hysterically at something  only they can see, which is either air  or the invisible  face of the God who rejoices  in the wordless heat  of their unblinking stare.   

TUESDAY Okay enough small fry, I'll take   a vision, prophetic dream, a hangnail rogue enough to snag  the world’s seams. Is there brick  beneath the vinyl siding, hard- wood under the laminate floor?   There's a hundred rolly-polly’s  when I pull up the concrete paver , an ancient war between an earthworm and the light  The underlife is both rolled tight and wriggling, missiling out  from the core. Enough civilian casualties— I’d like to throw a punch. If that’s not on the menu today, I’ll take  an old friend, a warm picnic table, lunch, and some of that secret sauce, please, which really brings the flavors out.

PRIMITIVE We’re not evolving out of this.  We’ve too much weight to levitate above it all, too little asphalt  to pave a freeway to heaven. And what makes us so sure  it’s over that hill anyway?  What the saints know is slow,  dragging their fingers through the dirt like neanderthals  till they snag a brittle edge of the world’s  scab, get a grip, then pull  till the timeless seeps out.

FALLING OUT You can, in fact, forget how to talk to someone. This isn’t dementia.  You still have a syntax, a tongue,   loads of memory, but you’ve misplaced  the cadence of conversation that used to click along, back  and forth, like the metronome  which carried the music you made.  Now you speak at once, apologize.  Other times, to avoid the false  starts, the stutter of “no, you go," a silence ensues. It's deep, no doubt, but not the kind in which you can hear yourself think.

CAMPFIRE ON THE EDGE The question is always if—living here  on the battlefield’s edge—we  see ghosts.  From experience, they’re not  asking about passing premonitions  of presence, doors we know we’d closed  found open to the night, even an old man  wandering the woods whose “good evening" arrives heavy, slow, as if trailing the sludge of centuries. What they want is a farmer  with his leg blown off below the knee of his Confederate gray, (that is, if it weren’t for reenactments to explain it away.) Let’s shoot straight: we fear real belief but love the haunting  of it, the chance to wave a hand through  its chest to reaffirm that we’re the firm ones  here. So what I say instead—to duck  the question and save us all the sticky mess when the answer doesn't fit in our mouths like a s’more—is that we have a bluetick who sits in the middle of the field and barks at nothing  more than that there’s a world here  for howling...

ZONING OUT "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 I’ve always liked Robin more  than Batman, tousle-headed hero  for those more than ready to throw a one-two WHAM POW   into the fight, just not prone to  pick it. I don’t have the sight,  you see, to scope out the bad guys  when they walk the streets in brief- case and sneakers, looking so much like me. It’s less strong in some of us, this need to know who’s behind  the mask so long as the villains  don’t know the need to stop running to ask. Real dark in Gotham  these days—I mean really, nobody's safe—which is maybe why  I find myself staring off so much,  searching for a signal in the sky.

PULLING IN Remember the turn that woke  something in us to say we were  almost home? Is this the same ache  as late September, the same, familiar door  abandoned train-tracks whisper towards?  And what about woodsmoke, mist  over the cow pond, words? Is all of it  just pebbles on the one, gravel  drive? I’ve been on this road  long enough to know not to ask  if we’re there yet, but no one can stop  the signs from saying we're getting closer.  And you, behind the wheel up there,   face flickering in and out  of our blurry sight in the dim light  of street lamps, your occasional whispers  veiled behind the gritty static of AM radio,  just know that I’m half- awake back here and can’t walk straight,  so you’ll absolutely need to carry me in.

FIRST TOOTH: THE TRUTH Well first there must occur a loosening, the calcified unfixed  with a gritty twist and given room  to explore a different angle, meal  to meal. Once started it will progress  more rapidly than it may feel  from where you prod it with the tip  of your tongue, till in the skin  of an apple or the salty grip  of someone’s fingers it is at last  unmoored. Sure, a bit of blood, a yawning abyss, but then one morning  this: a new certainty breaking through which will never leave you, this time  firm enough to take in the solid   fare you’ve always hungered for.