Jim Henle: Piney Woods



A slope of stillness and silence; scrub pines
well-spaced to respect each solitude; a few

slapped-down trunks mocked with minty algae.
The undercoat of long grasses,

a swaying lime-green mane;
wind that turns the pages rustling.

Two cabin roofs over the hillock,
huts abandoned by the fishermen:

human tattoos strewn
on the soft naked limbs of nature.

simple-answer’d bird hidden in the limbs
sings and makes nothing of.

Emptiness of the world like a house,
a house where the robbers have come and gone.

*Italics are scraps of King Lear


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