2 poems

by Charles Hensler

the garden shed 

You don’t know 

what led you there, after years— 

the doorway half-hinged, a rusty 

shovel, shears cobwebbed on the shelf:  

evening descending, the garden 

giving in to field. 

Soft rain arrives 

like a rumpled man in a tired suit, a weathered face 

under a rain soaked brim, pockets full of lint. 

He leans at the edge of the field 

as he has always leaned. 

He waits to be invited in. 

articulation 

Outside you realized your fingers 

had fallen from your hands, words 

from your tongue leaving you 

only able to push 

or punch, only able to utter 

a solitary sound 

the street a sprawl of rattles 

and whispers, gradients of refracted light 

a surface of silver cars, a crow 

in the afternoon lift of leaves, the lilt of voices 

from an apartment window 

a shape of home 

you remember: 

left in your speechless hand 

a smooth, gray stone. 

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 or is forthcoming in Jeopardy Magazine, Crab Creek Review, The Shore, One Hand Clapping and West Trade Review.