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Posts Tagged ‘Charlotte Lit’

Your Shallow Place in All of This — Lucinda Trew

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2025| 2 Comments »

[2 poems by Lucinda Trew]
if you wish to grow a garden, first seed
your soul with sadness
 . 
for it helps to have an ache, a molecule
of sorrow that will swell, release and drench
the patch of earth you claim
 . 
like a weather plane sowing stingy clouds
with silver beads of iodide, lush promise of rain
something withheld – a slip of rue, s spore
of woe to bury – a slender sprig of remembering
your shallow place in all of this
 . 
a cloister of green where secrets are safe
where worm and peat, centipede and muddy
trowel will carry melancholy to the seedling
graves you dig
 . 
for a garden is forgiving – a copse confessional
a place for penance – pulling weeds, snapping
roots, kneeling in dirt
 . 
and tending, gently tending, to fragile shoot
breaching bud, those in need of holding up
and the healing grace of fresh tilled ground.
 . 
♦
 . 
when trees fall
 . 
from natural cause – nor’easter, drought
decrepitude – they lean in, one upon another
++++ a prayer of knotty hands
 . 
we pray, too, in other ways, holding one another
close in crook and crutch of branch, and nests
++++ for those in need of cradling
 . 
we unfist fingers, unwind clocks, hold one another
in a basketweave of leaf and twig and comforting
++++ like trees, we slant
 . 
against wind and time, hearts and boughs that break
from storm and thorn and toppled crowns
++++ we ease one another
 . 
to ground, to the resting place of forest floor
to beds of moss and tender mercies yielding to ash
++++ as we all fall down
 . 
Lucinda Trew
from What Falls to Ground, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte, NC; © 2025
++++
IMG_9468
 . 
♦   ♦   ♦   ♦   ♦
 . 
I love these poems for their compassion in the deep sense of that word, “suffering together.” In reading these lines I am able to pause and slant against the wind of my own doubt and daily struggles. Lucinda writes, “a poem is a bone / in the graveyard of remembering.” In memory I visit the bones of loss and pain but also the roots and seeds of what may again grow into joy. In the music of Lucinda’s words and phrases, the myth and earthy origins her poems suggest, the impermanence of all things resting the midst of rising sun and growing plant – in these I rediscover hope. Yes, we all fall to ground. Yes, we may ease each other as we fall.
 . 
♦
 . 
Lucinda Trew lives and writes in the red clay piedmont of North Carolina, USA. What Falls to Ground is her debut collection and is available from Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts.
 . 
Additional poetry by Lucinda Trew at VERSE and IMAGE:
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Saturday’s Submission – Once a week on Saturday I feature one or two poems sent to me by readers. If you would like to consider having your poem appear, please see the GUIDELINES here:

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Things Taken, Things Remain

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2025| 3 Comments »

 . 
He, the oldest, was / the last to leave and / took our childhood with him.
 . 
[with 3 poems by Irene Blair Honeycutt]
 . 
When the Last Page Turns
 . 
When the last page turns
 . 
will I step into a star
 . 
on a moonless night
 . 
 . 
or drift deep into the dark
 . 
maybe alight on your door screen
 . 
a firefly – a single green lantern?
 . 
 . 
Wherever I was when last
 . 
you read me
 . 
let the empty space
 . 
remember
 . 
Irene Blair Honeycutt
from Mountains of the Moon, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
My mother has died. I am no longer a child.
 . 
What has she taken with her? I remember her fingers like butterflies across the keys, the baby grand in the tiny house on Marion Road. She played Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca at warp speed while Bob and I, three and five, whirled and flailed and leaped until we collapsed in convulsions of laughter. She gave us music, yes, and art and games and stories, but what I remember is the laughing.
 . 
Such a childhood she gave us. An old wig, staring eyes painted on her cheekbones, she became a wooly booger to take me trick-or-treating next door. The neighbors startled, then laughed, dubious, not entirely certain it was really her. She was sixty-five, I was forty, such children.
 . 
All the quiet moments before and between, quieter and quieter as her days slowed and faded – thank God I slowed enough with her to share a few. She had been the wizard of noticing, of pattern recognition, spotting a prothonotary warbler, racing the last few pieces into another puzzle at the beach or in her townhouse living room. These past years I named for her the house finch on the feeder, pushed pieces on the table to be closer to where they would fit. Helped with the morning crossword she used to whipsaw in ink. Held a napkin to catch drips from her popsicle on the front porch.
 . 
Who foresees becoming a parent to their parent? Who wants that job? My mother has passed into that kingdom where all she has left to bestow are memories. Her last power, her final gift. Has she taken everything else with her? Innocence? Joy? My childhood?
 . 
No. Not at all. In the nursing home, I lean my bald head to thunk against my equally bald father’s. We laugh. Such children.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Joy
++++++++++ after Mary Szybist
 . 
I had the happy idea I could be eating breakfast at my
++ friend’s table in California and become bees pollinating
++ her roses.
 . 
Over oatmeal and blueberries, I saw the Lafayette hills mixed
++ with shadow and light reflected in the patio window.
 . 
I had the happy idea I could enter the reflection and begin
++ hiking the path to the eucalyptus trees.
 . 
Sitting in the gravity chair on the deck, I imagined myself
++ a passenger on a jet, flying East of Eden on a Long Day’s
++ Journey into Night.
 . 
I had the happy idea I could be both the seashell sunning in
++ a Peruvian basket and hot-pink geraniums soaking up
++ water in terra-cotta pots.
 . 
I had the happy idea I could become Jarrell’s bat-poet, hitch
++ a ride on a red-shouldered hawk, write a poem while
++ hovering above the witch’s house after Gretel pushes her
++ into the oven.
 . 
I had the happy idea apples and walnuts and pomegranates
++ could mingle. A host of flavors and fragrances never
++ before tasted or smelled would be born.
 . 
My happiest wish was that the ocean would wash over my
++ skin and purify the life within my body. The marrow
++ of my bones, the tissue beneath my skull, would all be
++ renewed.
 . 
And if I truly imagined myself as happy, the pines with
++ candle-like candelabras would light up each night. No
++ one would even try to explain the mystery.
 . 
Irene Blair Honeycutt
from Mountains of the Moon, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
In A Song for the Hours, Irene Blair Honeycutt eulogizes the commonplace and the exalted: railroad spikes and a dead possum, John Donne and Typhoid Mary, a fragment of memory and a burst of birdsong. The message of the poem and the power of every poem in the collection resides in Song’s closing line: I am here. Irene fully inhabits the hours, the moments, and breathes them into poetry.
 . 
To notice: superpower of poets, gift of the muse, or hard-won skill requiring grueling apprenticeship? Read Mountains of the Moon and you may discover clues. Irene gathers places she has known deeply, music and art that have touched her, friendships and griefs, and awakens them – she gives them new life. Perhaps the “noticing” is equal parts paying attention to what is happening around you as well as to the warp and weft within that weave the fabric of your soul. Because Irene’s poems are taken from her true experience and inner truth, then freely, openly given to us, we readers may also be drawn into the noticing.
 . 
A confession: I often tell myself I have nothing left to write. Then I spend an hour with a book like Mountains of the Moon and discover threads within myself that have been calling to untangle themselves into words. Reading poetry has power to jiggle the notice! synapses. And, as usual, the most profound thing one notices is that we humans share in common a wealth of pain and joy. A gift indeed.
 . 
❦
 . 
The opening line of today’s selection is from Irene Blair Honeycutt’s Why, among my brothers.
 . 
Mountains of the Moon, by Irene Blair Honeycutt, is available from Charlotte Lit Press.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Milkweed, Jonas Ridge, NC
 . 
That spring she planted milkweed across the road from
Cozie Cottage on Bald Mountain. It was 2008. Thought
she was doing it for the butterflies.
 . 
By 2010 the milkweed had spread across the field, reaching
the apple trees. During the Great Migration, waves of
Monarchs followed invisible scents
 . 
to her place. Spent several splendid nights. Imagine ecstasy.
Plentiful drumming, feeding, laying of eggs.
 . 
Before they left, Susan drove her mother through
the wonder of it all –
 . 
Grandfather Mountain watching in the distance.
In 2014 her mother, at 96, took flight.
 . 
Though the milkweed has thinned and moved down
the slope, it remains a plant of hope. 2024.
 . 
For the Monarch. The earth.
And for the memories it sows.
 . 
Irene Blair Honeycutt
from Mountains of the Moon, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
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Treats

Posted in Imagery, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2024| 10 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by AE Hines]
 . 
A foot of new snow
 . 
and down the middle
+++++ of our icy street
a dawn congregation
+++++ of ravens, all blue-black
and wing, hunch
+++++ in their strange bureaucracy,
as if arrived to divide
+++++ the daily assignments. Even
at this age, I still see signs. Even
+++++ a gathering of black birds
on a snow-covered road,
+++++ a Rorschach test
that conjures a warning
+++++ in my anxious machinery:
 . 
an assembly of plague doctors –
+++++ with folded feather arms, dark
nodding heads. I wonder what
+++++ they are here to tell me.
None of us is promised green lights
+++++ and straightaways, but sometimes
the bloodwork comes back
+++++ quietly, the tumor
benign. Sometimes, just up the road
+++++ from where you lie in bed,
brakes give way and barrel
+++++ a terrified trucker across four
frozen lanes into your
+++++ could-have-been path.
 . 
AE Hines
from Adam in the Garden, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Imagine you really like to eat. No, I don’t mean you enjoy sitting down at the table, plate in front of you, bite by bite, chew & swallow, push away and say, “That was good!” What I’m talking about is when your eldest son calls and asks, “How’re you doin’?”, the first thing out of your mouth is, “For supper I had . . .”
 . 
It’s a blessing that Dad likes to eat. My experience from forty years of geriatric practice is that once you lose your appetite you’re going to have a tough time ever finding it again. The first thing Dad usually brings up when we talk is what he needs me to pick up at the store. He’s thinking two meals ahead, tonight’s supper, tomorrow’s breakfast. He can’t walk as far as the kitchen any more, he can’t rummage through the cupboards or the fridge, in fact there may not be many things left in life for him to enjoy, but he can think about something good to eat.
 . 
That’s why this morning I’m poking around in the freezer and shifting unidentifiables in the back of the refrigerator, holding a shopping list and a yellow pad. Besides chucking out the old and vaguely greenish, I’m making Dad a list. A “MENU” I’ll leave at his bedside. There’s a column for meals in the fridge, a column for freezer, and at the bottom is that most important header of all: TREATS. I found four kinds of cookies in the pantry. Four flavors of pudding we originally bought for Mom. Chocolate brownies with M&M’s his cousin June brought by. Some zucchini bread a neighbor dropped off (and it is good). Please don’t forget the Trader Joe’s Vanilla Ice Cream.
 . 
From here, then, it’s off to Harris Teeter. I’m sure I’ll see some more things Dad would like as I cruise the aisles. They say the olfactory sense is tightly cross-linked to the hippocampus – a familiar smell instantly evokes vivid memories of old associations. I suspect for Dad the gustatory sense is equally evocative. Maybe he needs a little country ham with red eye gravy. Maybe spoon bread or hushpuppies. Maybe I can find the recipe for Mom’s famous German chocolate cake.
 . 
In our final days, may we all treat ourselves to what brings us joy.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Eden
 . 
I recall placing ripe plantain on the lowest
branch of eucalyptus, and the tree
filling with small wings: toucans
and motmots, a flock of miniature finches
dusted with pale blue chalk. There are so few
days I would – if I could – set on repeat
and live over and over:
+++++++++++++++++ Here, the man
I love, sight of him a reviving breath,
carrying plates of chorizo and fried eggs.
Then the two of us reclined in dappled grass,
drinking hot chocolate from a single,
chipped cup beneath prehistoric ferns
that tower and sway just as they must have
with the world still new.
+++++++++++++++++ I like to pretend
then too – didn’t I? – that we were the first
and last of our kind, a multitude
of wings beating the air under a sun
that never set, our queer, middle-aged bodies
never a day older.
 . 
AE Hines
from Adam in the Garden, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Some quiet evenings I go out / to sit with them, all the men / I’ve been . . .
 . 
When has there ever been an evening that quiet? A space filled with invitation and empty of demands? When has my mind ever been that pliant, willing to contemplate such things much less able? Is there a garden somewhere waiting for each of us, waiting for our return?
 . 
Adam in the Garden by AE Hines offers no simple answers but it certainly invites questions. These poems span many years and many situations; even more so they span the many conditions of one human person. Broken and reborn, dead and exalted – you nor I are not one immutable creature, none of us an unvarying beam transiting the years allotted to our individual existence. If we discover a quiet moment and stop to think, we may discover the many persons we have been and are being.
 . 
Where could there be such a quiet space? Turn the page. Again. The poet invites us to join him here. He makes himself vulnerable to our gaze. He makes no other demand on us than to enter the quiet with him, to be with him and with our selves. And truthfully, I confess that I need this! I need the quieting of all those voices, external but really mainly internal, the quieting which is required to read a poem. Not to escape myself but to sit down with myself. Thank you for the invitation and for the welcome. Thank you for the sharing. It is, I assure you, a treat.
 . 
❦
 . 
Adam in the Garden by AE Hines is published by Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, Inc., through Charlotte Lit Press.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Green Satin
 . 
++++++++++++++for Ginny
 . 
Perhaps, it’s not the drugs
when you tell me you plan
to come back as a tree, wearing
 . 
green satin gowns and scarves
made of wind. No more ridiculous,
you say, than dying, or your wig
 . 
teetering from the nightstand.
Last night, a cypress lifted its dark
roots from the earth, and lay down
 . 
Like a great, leafy-maned beast
across your yard, making room
for more morning
 . 
to flood your window, dawn
a spotlight across a hospice bed
where you labor over breathing,
 . 
a potter over clay, spinning
and kneading the mud of yourself
into finer and finer pieces.
 . 
“It must be time,” you tell me,
with summer’s sun shining
and sparrows flinging
 . 
shadows on your walls.
When even the cypress lies down
and points the way home.
 . 
AE Hines
from Adam in the Garden, Charlotte Lit Press, Charlotte NC; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦

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