Charles Hensler

The Ruin

The way the light seemed sharp
and freighted, the trees, the clouds

       uncommonly green, white, the wind

rustling like tattered paper, like a past restless
behind a still standing wall

       unwilling to go quiet, unable to speak

of the foot-worn stones, voiceless, mirroring
an enameled sky—

only able to say

this light is a window, a window
on a lighted room, a room I know and never leave—

I can only arrive and arrive.

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Charles Hensler lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, Rust & Moth, The Shore, Parentheses, River Heron Review, One Art, Stone Circle Review and others.