L.R. Harvey Poetry

TEETERING The alarm has rung too loud for too long to consider even a brief return to sleep. And if what we’ve made of our days till now is a consequence of being wide awake, kicking off the covers is neither too enticing.  But there’s roughly ten minutes where sense is fluid as the water beside the bed, and the dream  doesn’t need to take the stand  to defend itself. It’s this thin- between that needs stretching   like a swim cap till it snaps over  the world’s scalp, the rest of our hours. What could we make of this place if we believed in it enough to dive in?

THIS FAR SOUTH About once every two years belief  sticks overnight and quiets the dead. Etched in white, the woods don't make us choose between forest and trees. Our soles let us know  exactly where we’ve been already,  where we’ve yet to go, and the road  behind the house is hushed  as schools close—who would dare to venture knowing in these conditions? Over a steaming packet of quick mix someone says it’s hard to believe there are people out there who live in these conditions all the time. 

Not Far Back Tsunami-swell of cicada washed over  the scald of late Georgia July, then receded back into the deep  cool of autumn lettuce and mulch  beneath the Bradford Pear.  How quickly we drop back to sleep after being swarmed with meat and red-eyed wonder. Just months ago we were pulsed from our pillows and deposited on porches in the moist dark  of morning, that transient space  where we had no trouble believing  in the world’s grating hallelujah and that other world sucking on the roots  beneath our very feet. Come now,  do we really need to wait  another seven years?  

SHOOTS My wife and I uncovered a family  of small things nesting in our box spring,  while a good friend and his  can’t get one small thing to grow  for more than a month. Last Spring  I pulled up the Basil sprouts  and young Oregano and faithfully watered the weeds for weeks. What grows  and what doesn’t both happens  in the dark, and it’s someone’s work  to decide what gets past that.  Past that, we’re left with an itch and a hope unbearable as cradled air that they can see in the dark enough  to know just what they’re plucking up. 

Lumber Run They know what they’re doing, placing the box of shims by the door on your way out. This isn’t their first time watching  a pilgrim set out to build something of the long afternoon of their life,  that Saturday saw-dust swagger  behind the lumber cart, bright denial for someone to help load it up  in the back of the truck.  Their “see you soon” is weathered,  pressure-treated from the footsteps of those who always come limping  back. What they don’t carry, though,  for all their expertise kept stacked on neat pallets in the back, is the piece you don't yet know you’ll need,  that scrap belonging to you already,  the one in your very own shed you saved out of a vague intuition that the missing piece of your particular puzzle is never kept in stock on the shelves.

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 what's what 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.

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...