Charles Hensler

Versions of Stars Arriving Late

The rail you ride. A diorama disappearing
in a clouded rear window, your card game

chances played for the next curve,
the moment’s mercury:

this isn’t where anything began—
nights in parents’ cars or upstairs

above the little grocery, coming
to an awareness on the summer roof over

the intersections of softened tar, the air
sweet, dark, dusty, cars gleaming and sequential

under the moon, versions of stars arriving
late—what they were, had been, their only play.

A kind of something will come of anything, reckless
and unwavering as the private meteor in your pocket

leading to patios, furniture, a double paned
street not too near the freeway, not too far.

Who was that you saw caught in a flickering pool
of platform light, a flash in a revolving door

fluorescent eyes distant, steps echoing
down a starry marble hall?

Charles Hensler lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Hand Clapping, Pidgeonholes, Parentheses, River Heron Review, boats against the current and others.