Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. 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, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Dwarf-Jack-D-Harvey-ebook/dp/B019KGW0F2

Boat Song

          (after Martin Codax)
 
Waters of the sea of Vigo,
Hast thou seen my amigo?
O God, that it were given!
 
Waters of the sea arising,
Hast thou seen my beloved?
O God, that it were given!
 
If thou seest my beloved,
For whom I sigh,
O God, that it were given!
 
If thou seest my beloved,
For whom I bear great suffering,
Tell him, tell him, I wait here,
Tell him I wait for him,
in the fading day,
in the dead of night,
in the rising dawn,
Tell him I wait for him,
O God, that it were given!

But From That Nest

Was there a kangaroo
hopped and hopped
on the desert
tail down,
brown top-fur
burnt tan
under the sun
with his leg tendons
tensing
like ribs on a fan?
Was there the tiniest yellow
swallow swinging and dipping in
gables and winter far off,
far off to the north?
Did he nest, did he sit on
his own ancient crocket?
 
 
Were there men
building and breaking,
creaking and stamping?
Cities spread out
on slick black roads,
streaming metal
over innocent meadows;
concrete flows like manna,
sets up skyscrapers
transcending
desert nights and tunnels
deep as mines.
 
 
Hopping, flying,
kangaroo and swallow,
refugees from the pride
in human eyes,
sorrowful grasshoppers
in the barns of Jacob,
try and try
on shaky ground,
in murky skies,
to find the space
in these black days,
the place and time
where no one can get them.

Idle Hands

Caesar knew;
in the carbonized palace,
when the sons of dawn
in blue array
arranged their creaking
knives about his heart.
 
Caesar felt
the distance of life;
his ambitious courses
sped away like
spaceships towards the
dwarfing sun.
 
In the palazzo
of tinted marble
not a piece of
royal furniture
out of place.
Lofty wars,
bloody hands,
bloody swords
in the emperor's thorax
become transparent
as windowpanes;
more than
food for thought,
history furnishes
fresh and deadly meat.
 
Inspired monks
in technicolor
illustrate the text;
on some cold
French winter's eve
Roman Caesar lives
and stalks
in the pantry,
free as grassy steppes;
 
Caesar yet.