L.R. Harvey Poetry

This Life is a Road... ...and there’s something about a road That calls for going.                                “But where?” you ask, And I have asked the same, and I have passed A million others I know would die to know If we have found an answer: Passed them in little red roadsters zipping across The interstate in the throes of midlife crisis, in grumbling trucks Acquainted with the botoxed dancers At seedy truck-stop bars, Passed them in loaded station wagons lost Along a country road or stuck In traffic headed East or West. I’ve come to doubt this something is found in the destination, For always upon my own arrivals I sense The often subtle summons of the road to home, A summons irrespective of where I’ve arrived; I sense the asphalt invitation To go where I belong, to drive Again the roads I lo...

Word Searching "Expression is all we want." - Emerson  An empty Moleskine in hand, elbows on knees I sit on the weathered wooden bench and stare out across the evening summer frolics of Coolidge Park,                   a one-man band’s saxophonic wail wafting across the nearby bridge to drench me in the sort of thoughts nostalgics are known to think at the end of every season. A simple reason brings me to this place of self-reflection, this space and time where fading sunlight, child’s laughter, and the smell of browning leaves combine to form the frame of mind ideal for poetic creation:       The  need to write. I am a cup that’s overfull, a thread that’s over-taut, a top-heavy pod of dandelion seeds that only needs the slightest breeze of inspiration to then release to the world the multitudinous thoughts that despe...

I Represent the System               I. Based solely upon my genitalia and skin I represent the system, A fact that often seems to serves To gag my distinctive voice And label me instead another ignorant corporate cog within The corpus of corruption.                                         "I'm with them" My whiteness seems to cry, muffling for me my choice Of what to support and what to believe.         II. On hearing a certain view I shared, A woman quickly informed me yesterday That "of course you think that way, You're white and male."                                      And there I heard and personally professed The cry of minorities, of women, of all the oppressed Who clamor to be given a voice That's more than j...

On Smoking a Pipe It tastes of leather books with yellowed pages and white-haired men who have led reflective lives on front-porch swings. The smoke that crawls in silky spires from out the wooden bowl like newly shifted silt from ocean footprints (smoke that is sent to scent the summer night with burnt vanilla and raisins) distinctly smells of father figures, of stuff that was built to work, of poems and poems and poems and fireflies and conversations late at night.

A Windowsill Memento "Memento Mori"  I watched it start a seed surrounded: Surrounded by soil, the brittle blue rocks That came in the bag, and (when I remembered to look) A bath of lukewarm water.                                             It grew up grounded In houseplant love, the love of windowsill sunlight And eager eyes just willing it to grow; A love that only seeds and children truly know. From there it shot up seemingly overnight And stood up proudly, puffing out its blooming chest Like youth who scoff at death Or laugh at the thought of mortality. Its sole reality Was youth and life and the now , With no sense of trepidation for days to come Or fearful thoughts of where or how It’d find its needed sustenance. And then I wa...

A Teacher's Reflection on the Ones who Got Away  There was a window, but it was small And tightly closed at times, (Frustrating when through it I could faintly catch a glimpse of all That lay before her.)                                If only she'd unlatched the sill And let me speak a word or two, Something to inspire hope or maybe to Give her a vision of what could be.                             ...                                                                                       The class sits still, Silently writing a journal or taking in a text, Oblivious to the fact That my reminiscings of her (an...

On Cleaning a Garage A life well-lived is a Taylor guitar, Dented and scratched from mistimed turns In corner bars On seedy city streets, With errant stomping feet And cigarillo burns From drunken Thursday-nighters; A faded neck from sweaty hands Playing thread-bare strings That buzz and ring in a too-loud downtown band. A race well-run is an old Toyota truck With chipping paint and whining belts And a drive-side window that’s stuck Unless the blinker is on; A truck that has intimately felt The twists and turns of country roads, The steady hum of the freeway’s song, The silence of starry nighttime drives along The empty parkway to home. An annotated book with a story between the lines, A wrinkled smile and crow-foot eyes, A dented wedding ring - The fullest lives are found in broken things.