Charlotte Hamrick

Pine Trees & Kudzu



Marinating in a rooted town
where no one ever left & nothing changed,
I waited, eyes bright with tail lights,

for my day of escape. In the arc
of sleepless nights I’d sometimes catch
the Jackson frequency, hear “Born to Run”,

feel a bright wild jetstream run through
my veins, wings thrumming beneath
my skin - a long, hard stretch toward

something besides pine trees & kudzu,
besides cruising Main Street & parking
at The Lake.

Years bloomed with the passing
of time, miles stretched longer
than 63,360 inches while time shortened

to a snap! - the people & places of my past
grew tiny as cities viewed from a jetliner.
Now, sleepless nights are ghost-filled rooms

I walk in my mind. Sometimes homesickness
passes through, a storm front of pine trees
shaking everything I ran from.

 

Charlotte Hamrick’s poetry, prose, and photography has been published in numerous online and print journals, recently including Emerge Journal, Fevers of the Mind, Love in the Time of Covid Chronicle, and New World Writing. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets where she sometimes does things other than read, write, and throw soggy tennis balls.