Dig down deep enough and you’ll find night blooms—
blue-dusked petals casting runes under forgotten
garden reaches, ink-black petals spooning clotted soil
into ever-shrouded stars, an ever-blackening sun
wheeling through dark spines and peat-stained teeth.
Lift dirt-caked, delicate slips. Lift mold and root.
Their voices promise neither clarity nor opacity,
offer only a clearing aside of what’s given, what’s
taken away. Their faces mirror each other and yet
are never themselves, never others buried further
down the road. Dig them up and take them home.
Sit on moon-filled porch steps cradling ochre and
vermillion pooling on your skin, and they’ll bloom
the simple hierarchies of heaven—untouched
and unseen, tasteless and silent, back to the deepest
shadow under the loam, back to the first still breath.
John Harvey’s poems have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Gulf Coast, The 2River Review, Weave Magazine, and others. He received his doctorate in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston (UH) and taught in the UH English Department and Honors College. He lives near Stockholm, Sweden with his wife and son.
