Jim Henle
In a time of foreclosure
through a fissure in workspace
a dark rake of clouds across the sky
a nation is a vibrant collage of steel
and glass encampments like upended
Olympic pools glorious so friction-free so
many cars below like a swarm of small
frogs out the inevitable glass both window
and wall the eye sways and falls where
the body cannot and the two-tone clouds spread
their arms preaching to the blue
congregation a sermon of somber grace and
rage unheard by the man with his fingers
perched in worry on his forehead like a wary
spider
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
Jim Henle
Jim Henle lives in Jamaica Plain, MA. His poems and translations have appeared in Salamander, Consequence, Cambridge River Review and elsewhere.