Poems by Ryan Harper
Keeping the Meridian
No deed I know tells my property
line. So what—the verge dividing
street from sidewalk, knotgrass sprawling
over the things I want thicker,
fescue and clover against every stray
seed from passing masses, trying themselves
on a plot that may be mine. So what—
still I go weekly to the work, trimming
the hellstrip’s strange dimensions, mowing
it slant, edging it flush—itself the edge,
possessed by common use, the neighbors watching,
this unredeemed region, vague compact
of soil, witness to my civic virtue,
small-town vanity. So what—this minding
my own place, maybe, the focused strain
of benign neglect: I shake the spray hose, loose
arch glancing, watering all things wanted
or not, maybe later to decide what to let be
in the meridian maybe mine.
The Changing Light at Plainsboro
A Poem of One Evening Spent
With Lynn Casteel Harper in New Jersey
In Touch with Participating Familiars
What intimates remains: the evening
grounds of the conference center, idle,
one in the leveled splay of central
Jersey, its vast, harrowed complexes,
asset management and big pharm
bare above the Barrens, fallow
at a day’s withdrawal, half-used
hull of a free market built for men
imagining their life in conventions:
long hours together, bonded, remote
enough, choice domiciles commutable
for seasonal work—the blessed work, the play—
bar glass ballrooms shining—grand agoras
now hollow save small bachelorette parties,
youth travelling teams, and us. We make our ground
reconnaissance: leaf-dusted patios,
pollen-becrusted phone booth near the woods,
dense trails into the hidden properties,
then empty field, softball backstop, remainder
of dirt, and, at last, mid-meadow, the helipad—
round and white, Persian blue bull
of Merrill Lynch impressed in the ring.
Asking the dusk for light enough to steer
the spirit I walk its body broadside,
planchetting its straight unbroken brow,
descending limbs, booting the thigh, ideo-
motive pawing spurred vahana rousing
in outline. Summoning the chopper
I imagine the son and sum of this approach
whirring, self-important, scudding down
from the city, blue with his own shares,
despite his airy body, swiftness of his vehicle,
lumbering in descent—drifty and wary.
Hovering the pilot I imagine hoping
a private hope the skids will touch the bullseye
even, as the bright boy wobbles out
of the sky, landed. Is it all play,
stray communicant—reflexive myth
tendered in the logos of work, charmed
of time? I sense a peace; it may be but
the dull chuff of inheritance running
out the clock. Unprosperous, I yield.
Lynn walks the bull in teasing meditation,
inventing a labyrinth in scramble, closed
system and its secreted monster.
She winds outline to life—molinete—
flowing, mulling options in exchanges,
withers—cambio—demanding bluer
comedies of ruin, imagining
the chopper still she turns and glides, unworried
whether the oracle will issue slack,
reasons, summons to the twilight corps
of bulldoggers twisting in the vague,
affected maze—sheer, resolved to ring
an idle calf to presence, flaking, scattered
in dust, the revels ended. Whirling, quickened,
the helice had carved its draft—the debitage
of cut strata flung, spinning, leaving
uncovered a folk hero inverse,
stock figure bucking up, alert in seizure—
departing from the circle—we imagine
son and sum at day’s vacated threshold,
incarnate and withdrawing like a god.
Ryan Harper is an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Fairfield University-Bellarmine in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the United States. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.
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