Petroglyphs

By Keith Harvey

The first poem of Petroglyphs appeared unbidden in a dream. Like Odin's raven, the poem and its images heralded the coming of a simpler style that dredges up primordial images and myths to create a sacred space where change occurs, language renews itself, and the dead live again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595631827

Keith Harvey

Keith Harvey is an international attorney, who divides his time between his offices in Dallas, Texas and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of two novels, Vogel Flies South and Vogel and the White Bull--and a collection of poetry--Petroglyphs.

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Contents

Acknowledgment

Dedication

Lovers of the Lower Level

Couple

Hand Worked

Magic

Glacier*

Silver Trout

Smoothest Stone

The Bite

Eels

Lake Louise

The Angel and the Starfish

Wolf

Red Fox

Lone Wolf

Wolves

Sea Wife*

Birth

Last Hike

The Loon

Fauna

Preamble

The Crow People

Winter Plus One

Cave Gossip*

First Day

Second Day

Third Day

Fourth Day

Anima

Winter

Winter Squirrels

Thaw

A Question of Numbers

The Plan

Crow and Crane

The Turn

Waiting for Her

The Cobra

Afterbirth

Anger

The Mark

The Herm

Sacrifice

Eye Fishing

Huis Clos

Trout Fishing

Calving Time

The Necklace

Talos

Aaron’s Sorcery

Impedimenta

Lichtung

The Mason

Wille zur Macht

Machen

The Shaman

Seashell*

Traces

Fishing

Awakening

Filet

Revenant

Busker

Zipporah’s Flint

The Staff’s Snake

Pendulum

Austria 1782

Electronic Age

Lichtung (II)

Conjunction

Quelle

Quelle II

La Parole

Projection

Visita

Verwandlung

Revenants

Stormtrooper

Wasteland

Traum

Ironic

55

Quicksilver

Giant

Revenant III

Revenant IV

Revenant V

Quotidian

The Trap

Waiting

A Snail’s Tale

Snail Silence

Life on the Under Leaf

Günter’s Secret

Günter and Paul in Clichy

Kesselschlacht

Seeking Celan 1968

The Compass

Repetition

To do not

The Cuckoo

Icarus’s Lament

The Hunter

Enfleshment

Circle Man

Acknowledgment

Some of these poems have previously appeared in the following magazines: Permafrost, Illya’s Honey, REAL, and Spiky Palm. I thank the editors of those journals for their support.

In addition, I want to thank Dr. Paula Harvey for her love and support; Dr. Ronald Schenk for his creative listening; Dr. Detlef Meyer-Ohlert and Petra Meyer-Ohlert for their affection, generosity, and friendship; and Larry Shriner at Murder of Crows books for his help in producing and distributing this book.

Finally, the spirits of several revenants haunt this collection. Two of them were poets—Cyd Adams and Paul Celan. I refer the reader to their poetry.

Dedication

To Dr. Paula Harvey

Lovers of the Lower Level

We are the lovers of the lower level;

roasted light thaws hearts beating together,

like the weighted swing of a German metronome,

our levers and springs tick red in the earthen glow,

slow our mechanical march as we embrace

and lie supine upon molten rock to sleep;

our bodies entwine like snakes above a lava sea,

until our skin drips from a leaded mirror

projecting our metallic selves like clay

into each other’s disappearing arms.

Couple

After chaos expelled them,

she contained him,

absorbing his anxiety,

madness and aloneness.

He constructed

a home

in a cave.

Carrying a sharpen spear,

its tip hardened

in stolen fire,

he hunts bison.

In the age of order,

they stand alone,

uncontained,

twitching

from a palsy

of self-involvement.

Hand Worked

to Paul Celan

The work emerged from the wood.

Hand carved, yes, with chisel and mallet

but it was there first in the tree.

Waiting. I waited it out of the wood,

prodding more than listening or seeing,

with fingers attuned to the melody

but pleasing to my gray eyes,

a mist laden silhouette,

a primordial pictograph

etched into sandstone,

translated from a bubbling spring.

Magic

to Cyd Adams

He did not plant the larch.

He thrust it into the earth like a spear.