L.R. Harvey Poetry

New love is a guest-house shower. Her warm embrace is welcome after many mirthless miles beside an empty passenger seat,         the heat of her companionable cleansing kiss exactly what is needed to wash away the cold remembrance of the lonely journey there. And yet you do not know her limits, do Not know how far to push or twist before she’ll break.    You will be burned or given the cold shoulder of rejection once or twice, at least, but do not turn away:       Stay and learn, and remember that in the end newness just takes time.

“When I was young, we went from home to school and school to home uphill both ways.” Old man, in a way you’re right, because my journey home from this school of life is feeling like an uphill climb; and how it burns, knowing that in time I’ll reach my home atop the hill at last.

Reflection to My Students: Written in a Moment of Bitterness After Receiving a Paycheck I never found the key to financial wealth Myself, so I won't pretend To offer it; If money's the goal, consider pursuing health Professions or banking, and spend Your precious time In books on brittle bones and paper bones With wordy Latin names Or models meant To help you understand financial growth. The physically and fiscally lame Will thank the time You spent in school by signing hefty checks That pay your bills or fill Your Mustang's tank. I doubt that I can offer this sort of wealth. But the wealth I'll give will spill Like so much gold, A flowing gold of words and not of coin, A gold you'll never store In earthly banks Or spend on faster and bigger houses - And yet a wealth I'm sure Is worth more than gold: An eternity of temporary escapes, An intimate insight into The human condition.

"What kind of poetry do you like?" He seemed the type who liked to talk of such things: The kind of man who knows the words of the world, Who can sense the speech of evening rain on wind, Who listens well to the quiet laugh of leaves.      "What kind of poetry do you like?" I asked, And watched the question marinate within His mellow, summer-sunset mind. He chuckled: "A baby's smile; The sound of summer cicadas; A crunchy leaf; My favorite poems Are unperturbed by words."

a first-year teacher the morning before You remembers the way your baseball coach, who was like a father to him, would after practice tell the team there’s pride in being the first one there and the last to leave, but he never made it sound this tiring. It’s dark as you approach the high school’s double glass doors, the renovated entrance emitting a pulsing orangish light that guides you through the faculty lot, your classroom key in hand, into the silent gaping halls your trying desperately to fill by audibly humming “This little light of mine.” You remind yourself to be aware of joy in the little things: the warmth of eighty-seven copies that slide from the sleepy printer in rhythmic drumming, the mumbled “morning” of the early student who reclines against the cobalt blue lockers, the noise the mediocre workroom coffee machine   makes, beginning to drip with life.   You know that in about an hour the curtains on this darken...

checking into another Marriott The hotel lobby plays on repeat a scene of blue-green waves exploding on sea-side cliffs like party poppers, confetti riddling the air in an ocean celebration.                                        He's  seen it many times: The way one wave will drift back into another like shifting sands to share the honor of hitting the cliff another time, another time, and always another time, as if the communal act of wrecking rock in rhythmic rolls were its God-commissioned mission.   But this time, standing in the too-long line of automated businessmen in suits who shift their weight and check their watches and roll their eyes exactly like they were programed to, he watches the automated lobby loop and he cannot help but notice...

Speed Dating in Heaven I hope in heaven there's speed dating. You laugh, for you can't help but see An over-smiling, slightly overweight Angel ringing a heavenly bell To send us off, a group of awkward floating spirits rating One another (internally) on who fits well In an angel body, who best plays The harp, and who has adapted best to being seen Again in diapers. But the dates I see are of a different kind. I see an endless room of broken people made whole, And rows and rows of tables where one by one I sit across from you and him and her, and we finally find The time we never found on earth To hear each other's stories, to talk with the goal Of truly listening instead of getting things done, To have a conversation without the dearth Of time we knew too well in earthly bodies. I'll spend an eternity with you, I'll talk forever with him, and on it goes; I hope that speed-dating in heaven is incredibly slow.