L.R. Harvey Poetry

LOOKING FOR A TRACT Hard to find a good hill to die on  these days, a creed with a property line  and stakes you know like an old oak. Flocks of yellow Cats graze  the world into the low-300’s  with names interchangeable  as Hawk’s Ridge, Cedar Pointe. No one is arguing the point that people need  places to live, but it’s hard to map the jagged edges of faith when everyone is smiling at you  from their porch, agreeing.  In this economy, you’ll need to move pretty far out to afford such conviction,  putting some miles between  you and your welfare, maybe  even family and friends. If such a move involves your house is a matter of personal preference, and largely loose ends.

SONG OF A BRIDGE WALKER Hard to make yourself at home  in a hallway. It’s a thin-between,  and you’re neither quite queen  nor cook when you rush back and forth trying to make yourself breakfast in bed. The salesman said  of the RV they can be quite homey if you hang some pictures  on the wall, and if he isn’t wrong  you still need to chock the wheels when you get there to keep from  rolling off. Regarding greenery,   your options are plastic or potted plants. Even trolls choose not to live  on the bridge but beneath it.  If there’s any benefit to this swinging  we’ve stepped into after they sold  our fathers on the benefits of more rooms and the means of scurrying between them,  it’s that when there’s always something un- settled inside there’s very little risk  of a wrong rooting.  It’s called motion  sickness, and it means you’re still  moving, so       no, we’re not the...

BETWEEN What cowardice and a certain kind  of courage share is the refusal  to pick a side. In cars with no bumper stickers they wind through the signs and park next to each other  at the local library. One writes in  a vote not on the ballot  and the other is cast away  at the door because someone  who shares their name already  signed it a long time ago.

SECOND COMING Because I didn’t like the look of the leaf and then because I just forgot  about the cardboard box in the garage, I never buried the bulbs of Elephant  Ear. Over the next two years I told  the old man with four holes in his yard and one in his heart from an uprooted daughter about the green of first shoots,  how they were weathering the heat wave, what I’ve found to be the best way  to deal with potworm. It was only  in the Winter when we sold the house  and the incessant snuffling of being found went with it that I knew some worms can't be run from. On Sunday,  beneath a sky heavy as elephant hide, I pulled a different box and all its dirty contents into the light. He hugged me  and we both cried, and something behemoth stirred, lifted its head, trumpeted.    

TIDE Not abnormal for the family cars  to greet the final pothole  together, the bills eying you from their little plastic windows. The washing machine  growls a good-morning goodbye  and the downstairs toilet hears  the ruckus and wakens to remember it too  is overdue a leak. Though no dike   can stop the tide long enough  to get to the bottom of it,  no one will deny things happen  in waves. So when we didn't time it right and something like hope comes frothing to fill the shallow hollow of the moat and flatten our sandcastles, it makes a kind of ridiculous sense   that it wants the beach chair too  and the you who happens to be  sitting in it. And we're right,  of course: we can never afford this without sinking ourselves hopelessly in more than debt.

REBUILDING THE COOP Something in youth was okay to duck beneath the screw-studded 2x4 of the door and reach blindly into the open mouth of a paint bucket  for whatever was waiting there. I still believe  in the muted sheen of gold  each day offers, and there’s no doubt  that claiming it will always take  a shit-stained pair of boots, a certain blindness, the risk of reaching-for,  but I have felt—more keenly of late— the gaze of the half-domesticated dragon eyeing the sleepy village of my back as I stoop to swipe the hoard,  have yet to grab the blacksnake with the sun halfway down its throat  but have come close. It’s still a yolky yes from me, but also now a fragile how   best to receive the gift, to re- structure our shelters accordingly.

A QUESTION OF MEANTIME  And just when you slip into the bright thought that you might have drawn the card which lets you skip the dark square and stay in the game until it's time to pack it all back into the box, it’s suddenly the friend of a friend or the freshman when you were a senior,  an old teammate’s little sister whose name you can almost remember. At dinnertime a cold wind creaks open the door and now the stray dog–whose many attacks down the street you’ve read about  on your way out–is snuffling  beneath the table around your feet. Just how much more bread can the silver knife butter when the hair on his back is wet with more than dew? Such fare takes plenty of time to chew, may never go down,  but right now what the children want is butter on their bread,  and the dead, if they could, would take the knife and lather it on  thick. At least for tonight,  yours the knife, the children, the butter stick. Salt it to taste,  then bless t...

NOT MINE, BUT YOURS Not unlike walking at midnight  into the Savannah and lighting a flare, or paddling past  the sand bar with a gushing  wound, and waiting there in the haunting hush  of crickets and wave-lap for whatever will come  parting the darkness to receive you in the warmth of its gaping jaws.

 THE BENDS           At a certain depth the voices all thrum at the same, garbled pitch.  Both wisdom and the waiting swarm of bees call you up for air,  both wisdom and the Anglerfish draw you deeper. Do you paddle faster  from Leviathan or close your eyes and wait?  Once inside, do you stab the tender heart or caress it? There’s leagues on leagues but we’re in  out of ours and the tanks are low. You die if you come up too quick, you die  if you don’t surface soon, and at this sounding we won’t be dragged out by the light  of the moon. As to good news, t he returned ship sloshes vacant  at port while the wreck is found  at rest on solid ground, home now  to an ecosystem riddled with life.

REFURBISHED The ladybug dies  wedged in wicker,  is spray-painted green.  Disassemble yourself.  Free trampoline.   Not one to jump to conclusions, but if even pipe-smoke throws a shadow in moonlight, nothing is ever full- nothing, right?  The trees agree to lower the veil  and reveal the bare strip of road which runs behind the house.  The white roar of leaving  never leaves, and the porch  light flickers but never goes out.  In a world of partially resurrected things, the quick and the dead dance a tango then collapse in a tangled heap to make  furious love till morning shakes the can and picks a fade-resistant shade of light.

WHAT’S WRONG It’s not that the baby—thinking  it’d found a piece of candy—ate  the engorged tick that dropped off  the dog. The baby did not ,  thankfully, eat the tick that bloated itself to the point of plopping  soundless as shadow from the folds of the soft under belly of the dog. It's not even the thought of how the baby could have eaten  the tick gyrating its little legs  like hell's maestro in the middle of the living room floor had we not got there before and found  what we thought was a red M&M and popped it on the tongue of a purple BIC. When you’re this full of blood you never quite can pinpoint exactly  what the chafing is or where it’s coming from, but there’s certainly an itch tucked between things, and one that's getting bigger by the minute.