Charles Hensler
Image by Matt Palmer from Unsplash
Charles Hensler lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. He attended Western Washington University, where he won the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in Jeopardy Magazine, Crab Creek Review and The Shore, and is forthcoming in One Hand Clapping.
Everything As It Was
After he died the furniture
remained solid and wooden, the tiles
hard and cool beneath our feet.
The old road still wound past
the sagging houses, mossy cars rusting
like shipwrecks, the trees leaning, still restless.
We drove past the burger joints, the parking lots, under the endless
jets. Behind the face in every window we guessed
moon, wildfire, ocean—a foreign country, an unreachable shore.
Then into your old town, the early blossoms
still pink and white—spring blowing in cold, the blossoms
showering down.
A passenger on the night train—your shifting image
in the plate glass. For us the road home parting
a forest, a field, a town: street lights ticking by—
our faces there in the pale dark, then gone.
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