Cliff Henderson

Real Estate

One would suppose
every house begins
as a dream,
at the very least,
a fine intention.
As to it being a home,
well what to say
but that love is essential.
I have lived in such places
where the door opens
to a kind of exhilaration
where I was one
of an entity of another
and then of others our own,
and everything
so of the selves together,
lamp, books, sofa, chair,
pots and dishes,
I was embraced by it all.
And the voices!
How wonderful
to find each time we moved
from a place so rich
for us in memory
that we left as much in regret
as in anticipation,
only to find, arriving at another,
hardly had we settled in,
eveything that really mattered
had come with us.
Across three states,
and more than fifty years,
one apartment after another,
the house by the lake,
the gatehouse on six acres,
the place on the cape,
it was with us everywhere,
You used to say,
'We have a magic carpet.' Not had
And when you left,
it carried you away.


Don't Speak

Don't speak, look there.

Her smile comes easily,
yet, there's something more,
not for me to see.
She has a history.

I must go carefully.
This is a woman, not a girl,
and I, long ago a boy,
cannot recall;
perhaps about me,
best of all,
that I have so often lost

She's listening,
to something far away,
some memory I will never know,
not ever mine to know.
Still, I like to think
I've reached her,
touched at the sublime.

What can I say;
the answer is say nothing.
What shall I do;
do nothing just as well.
Let silence speak.
Silence is her realm,
the art of quiet where she dwells.

And when she listens,
she hears what I will never hear,
that when she turns, all unaware,
there is awareness there.


Forever

Forever is the boy
whistled winter
down the streets
of that old coal town,
past the brewery
whispering its sour breath
into the day,
a prayer for the working man,
has seen faint smoke
from the factory half employed
send up its wispy pride,
the sun almost
through the clouds,
just there,
and the woman,
young enough in her red coat
bringing color on her way,
holding herself close
for want of another,
ice melt
on the sidewalks
making rainbows underfoot.


About the Author

This Old Man

No one wanted his poetry
His only appearance more or less
Permanently in print
Was the sign scrawled outside his door
That began
This government
Those thieving bastards
The poems themselves
After endless rejection
He tore into pieces
And flung into the wind
Where they would from time to time
Reappear
Blown against wet windows
Or stuck to a shoe
And when held to the light
Read in fading phrases
Things like
Time passeth and
I lost her and
He loved

-Clifford Henderson

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