Authors /
Charles Hughes
Charles Hughes’s poetry collections are The Evening Sky (2020) and Cave Art (2014), both published by Wiseblood.
Hypothesis, August 6, 1945
People—not everyone—but some—the onesAttuned at times to deep realities—Monks, artists, children—though unversed in war—...
Blood Memory
A field where nothing grows appeared to me— A onetime dream, so far, not long ago— Much as you see in pictures: no man’s land. ...
The Flowers and the River
at the Walking Bridge
at the Walking Bridge
Late-season black-eyed Susans, stooped but tall, Their softening evening yellows well-worn velvet In the low sunlight, acquiesced to fall, ...
Mid-October
Birds flying too high for me to see what birds.
Crows, if I had to guess, five or six crows,
All rising higher, higher, only to fall
A little way, then rise again, compose...
At twilight
The sun had lost its glare and some of its heat.
People arrived, stood talking, looked for seats.
Children resisted parents’ pleas to sit...
O Ophelia!
Impeccable August sky, blue ice except
The splotch of incandescent sun. I’m reading,
In the bright daylight of days like today,...
Night comes
Unspecific guilt
(He chalked it up to old age)
Pursued him full tilt,
As storm winds bear down
On the defenseless outskirts
Of a struggling town...
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Good move, 1962
Fifties split-level, clapboards olive green
When we moved in that June. Big trees green, too.
(We’d come from a gaunt, treeless subdivision.)...
On the first anniversary of my father’s death
Rain, early March rain
Heaving against the windows;
March storms in again,
All bluster, as though
Intending to remind me
Of something I know:...
“Fear not, little flock”
(Luke 12:32)
This morning—outdoors, walking—
I count the birds I see:
Clouded late winter sunlight
Discloses only three—...
Winter birds
“But what about the birds that don’t fly south?”
A boy—age six?—arms full of books—is asking.
The library is closing. We’re in line....
Her words are light
In memory of Dorothy Parkander, scholar and teacher (1925–2018)
How strong I feel the sun!
I feel the rain some days
That strong. Today is one:...