By Lucinda Trew

                         (for Dannye Romine Powell)

a friend died today, and I cannot cry
I am bone dry, though the world around me 
swells and sobs with rain 

and hurricane waves – it is that time 
of year, early fall, when the sun loosens
its long hold on days

and we turn back clocks, christen 
storms, light candles when squalls 
hasten dark

she died swiftly, a pristine golden leaf 
blown from a brilliant, spangled tree 
unseasonably soon 

too soon and still, I cannot cry 
I recall sunroom visits, that low-country
laugh, glasses of Prosecco  

coaxing stories from one another rapid-fire
because we found friendship late, in this letting
go season of gale-force winds 

that topple us, tie us to the ballast of one 
another’s sorrow and joy, loosen our tongues 
to reveal tough root, tender shoot

and longing to know the chronicles  
of one another’s new grass days, glistening 
and green, dewy with the dream of spring rain

and silken blades that taste of wheat
and jade, the lushness of revealing, and reveling 
in knowing 

yet here we are – just me now, grieving 
dry-eyed, gazing across a straw-tossed lawn
in need of watering

~~~

Lucinda Trew, author of What Falls to Ground (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025), is a poet rooted in the pine forests and red clay of North Carolina’s Piedmont. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and recipient of Boulevard’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets.  Her poems appear in Cagibi Literary Journal, The North Carolina Literary Review, Burningword Literary Journal, storySouth, and other journals and anthologies.