Evelyn’s Junipers: two poems by Charles Hughes

juniper, image by Bronisław Dróżka, on Pixabay

Evelyn’s Junipers

She and her husband chose the name:

A restaurant soon to be.

With work and time, their place became

A local favorite. She

Kept on with it when he was gone.

Dark winter nights, it glowed

Welcome as ever there alone

Beside a two-lane road.

People chalked up the change to her

Long grief. She seldom spoke:

Business, of course, but seldomer; 

Never what might evoke                        

Tears—not the restaurant’s trademark shawl

Of junipers, these days

Tangled together, shapeless, tall,

Warmth secret, much like grace.

                           *

Star on a Winter Morning

What do you think, do you think that you know,

When you wake with a start from a peaceful night’s sleep,

And it’s winter and cold and the forecast is snow,

And the Christmas just past you’ve put back where you keep

Certain dreams of such beauty they ought to be true?

Yes, you’ve put Christmas back where it’s hidden from view,

Since the world must go on and your work must be done

And you can’t (you’re no fool!) dream your whole life away,

Though you soak for a while in the glow of that sun,

The same star you were dreaming before it was day,

And may learn, as you lie there, this lesson from dreams,

That the world is much less and much more than it seems.

Charles Hughes is the author, most recently, of ‘Ifs, a Few Buts, and Other Stuff’ (a book

of poems for children) published by Kelsay Books, and two previous poetry collections,

‘The Evening Sky’ and ‘Cave Art,’ both from Wiseblood Books. He worked for over 30

years as a lawyer and lives in the Chicago

area with his wife.

June 2025 issue