In the evening glow I wait
While gathering water, anticipate
The arrival of our sally to the joy field
To see what it asks of me, to see what it yields
An old Indian trail it must surely be
Riding in the bus so anxiously
As the twinkle of men’s light dwindles
That comes gloriously from electric spindles
Escaping the umbilical grid and grasp
Hurling toward a city glow and gasp
When the scene of possibility unfolds
Beneath the orange summer moon’s glow
The travelers wait with fitting grace
Though the gatekeepers covet the pace
Of the caravan and those who understand
And me, who does not comprehend
What the potential may be, anything?
Will it comfort me, will I be ready to sing?
For there is a secret place that worries
And doesn’t seem to hear my cries
When the tents begin to gather
Some obviously prepared for foul weather
I offer up my hand to assist
To be welcomed in to join their bliss
What happened next was the greatest of joys
To bear witness to the thinking men and their toys
Sail off on the Lemurian craft
And be the Zuvuya no matter how cast
Written by : Trevor A. Clendenin
Trevor A. Clendenin is an African-American writer and lifelong musician whose work blends lived experience with a clear-eyed, literary sensibility. Raised in a military family and shaped by years spent in Boulder, St. Croix, and on the road, he’s moved through the worlds of jam bands, digital media, and small-town creative communities with the same curiosity that drives his fiction. His debut novel, Zuvuya, draws on decades spent in America’s improvisational music orbit, where transcendence, failure, ambition, and myth often collide.
Before turning to creative writing, Trevor earned a BA in Philosophy from Rollins College, a Master in Visual Media from IE in Madrid, served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, worked as the Director of New Media for a PBS affiliate in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and later co-founded a digital marketing agency. He has played guitar in bars, basements, festivals, and renegade fireside jams across the country, and still believes that music communities are one of the last places where people strive for truth.
He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife and daughter, and is at work on new fiction and essays about aspiration, identity, and the strange pilgrimage of American life.
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