local_library Heimkehr, October 1981

by Jack Harvey

Published in Issue No. 237 ~ February, 2017

 

The sweetness in sap

is plenty hot,

it rises slow as steam.

I feel the breath

of my disease

rise

in the same slow way.

I owe a cock (my own?)

to Aesculapius

yet I am not healed.

 

Mortal coils

are shuffled off

the poets say

with ease or not;

hot or cold

we take our leave

for other worlds

or ways.

 

Blueprints from the

draftsman’s

hallowed hand

bring on the fearful night

or brilliant light of morn,

bring on phantasms, mist

or music of the spheres.

We take our time

from His or Hitler’s

comings and goings;

we take our time from

eternity, if you please:

 

iceberg enough

its cold creation

melts

drop by drop

to the world beneath.

 

Sure of seconds, the atomic clock’s

as out of whack

as Big Ben,

and we stump on, regardless.

We coarse souls.

 

Ancient ships will

wait in the roads,

taking their time.

Biding a wee bit,

babies will die.

 

I agree that

every life brings

down the rain,

the rain in buckets

the small rain

the cold rain.

The rain on trees

is warm;

on our sleeping bodies

you and me

I agree

the rain is cold

and comfortless

and so will be.

 

Together or apart

I agree

the time is short

and not always sweet.

 

And so will be.

 

And yet the clay, our clay

alive long since,

changed by the sun

and dried and caked;

 

two brittle mortal pots

we sit apart,

afraid our love

of being close

 

will break us both.

account_box More About

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.