Hastings Hensel

BPR 42 | 2015

Hastings Hensel lives in Murrells Inlet and is the author of a chapbook, Control Burn.

With my iron rod
I bend down low
and prod the mud
at dead low tide,

below the salt wind
and the marsh grass
the salt wind strums,
gouging for glass.

I think it must clink
like a typewriter key
after a long pause

in which no thought,

worth its salt, comes.
I have marked the rod
with lines, the times.
Oh everywhere I go

I puncture the earth
like the egret does:
foot-print, rod-hole,
period and comma.

Once I hit a dead fish.
Seashells, an anchor.
But never anything

I keep gouging after:

shards of amber, jade,
frosted Kelly greens.

A jar, cornflower blue,
inches, decades, down.