Blink
Lucinda Trew | Poetry, Fall 2024
In December, the remnants of field cotton tease you into believing in snow.
It is drive-by deception, stubborn bolls blinking wintry-white, overlooked, signs of a wet
season and late harvest. But none of that matters when you’re nearing the mirage on a
back country road headed home, hungry for seasonal markers, a premonition of what’s to
come – and the unraveling of what was.
Slowing down you see the drifts for what they are, dusty husk and hangers-on, stooped
men at the end of the bar awaiting last call. You note the fluff is growing dingy, and the
cane holding up aged blooms is brittle-bending, rasping in the wind. But the illusion is lovely.
If only you could turn around. Try it again. Keep your foot on the gas and your eye on
the rearview mirror, trusting in the blur of time travel and the light trickery of this
haunting, hoary month. Memory is like that. Seductive. Shapeshifting. At first glance, a
fine cameo of a girl in a plumed hat. Blink or look away, and she becomes a crone.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
Writing often feels like a journey home: a search for identity, belonging, nostalgia, and leave-taking. I find these universal themes to be my guiding compass. From Odysseus’s long trek back to Ithaca ... to the elusive, idealized notion of home in Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again ... to Kerouac’s escapist pursuit in On the Road – we are drawn toward and away from the idea of home. Southern writers, in particular, I think, capture the yearning for origins, earthly connection, the tension of change and coming-of-age. In my poem Blink I explore home, memory, and the shifting, contradictory nature of beauty. For those of us raised in eastern North Carolina, winter cotton fields are a landmark – a reminder of what we know so well, what we long to leave behind, and what will always pull us back into place and presence. Beauty is elusive. And the grounding we seek is ever-shifting.
Lucinda Trew’s poetry has been featured in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, The Poet, Cathexis Northwest, Mockingheart Review, storySouth, Eastern Iowa Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. She lives and writes in North Carolina with her jazz musician husband, two dogs, one cat, and far too many (never enough?) books to count.
Blink
Lucinda Trew | Poetry, Fall 2024
In December, the remnants of field cotton tease you into believing in snow.
It is drive-by deception, stubborn bolls blinking wintry-white, overlooked, signs of a wet
season and late harvest. But none of that matters when you’re nearing the mirage on a
back country road headed home, hungry for seasonal markers, a premonition of what’s to
come – and the unraveling of what was.
Slowing down you see the drifts for what they are, dusty husk and hangers-on, stooped
men at the end of the bar awaiting last call. You note the fluff is growing dingy, and the
cane holding up aged blooms is brittle-bending, rasping in the wind. But the illusion is lovely.
If only you could turn around. Try it again. Keep your foot on the gas and your eye on
the rearview mirror, trusting in the blur of time travel and the light trickery of this
haunting, hoary month. Memory is like that. Seductive. Shapeshifting. At first glance, a
fine cameo of a girl in a plumed hat. Blink or look away, and she becomes a crone.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
Writing often feels like a journey home: a search for identity, belonging, nostalgia, and leave-taking. I find these universal themes to be my guiding compass. From Odysseus’s long trek back to Ithaca ... to the elusive, idealized notion of home in Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again ... to Kerouac’s escapist pursuit in On the Road – we are drawn toward and away from the idea of home. Southern writers, in particular, I think, capture the yearning for origins, earthly connection, the tension of change and coming-of-age. In my poem Blink I explore home, memory, and the shifting, contradictory nature of beauty. For those of us raised in eastern North Carolina, winter cotton fields are a landmark – a reminder of what we know so well, what we long to leave behind, and what will always pull us back into place and presence. Beauty is elusive. And the grounding we seek is ever-shifting.
Lucinda Trew’s poetry has been featured in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, The Poet, Cathexis Northwest, Mockingheart Review, storySouth, Eastern Iowa Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. She lives and writes in North Carolina with her jazz musician husband, two dogs, one cat, and far too many (never enough?) books to count.