Two Poems

by David Cazden


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​November

This is the month
when we set the clocks back
and leaves turn russet,
spiraling into the road.
Last spring we put the most fragile
plants in a glassed-in porch,
keeping them close
the way we kept hope.
By summer we gardened
at night, watering under a mood
ring moon, changing colors
like the polls in the news.
November's the month
when a year eats
its own tail―rain, cold, warm,
rain again―the brown eyed susans
bend to the ground
and don't meet our gaze
while a giant sunflower
burdened with seeds
​breaks at the waist.
And after it's over
I spend hours reading emails―
"I feel I'm not wanted
in this country anymore,"
a friend writes
but my response is unanswered
and the email thread frays
for days and weeks,
pulling through the sweatshirt
gray skies of the first snow―
​Then one day I wake
thinking our yard's in new bloom―
but it's just petals of ice
and blossoms of flakes―
each one unique
as a name,
falling and melting
over the tongue
of the sun-warmed ground.



Your Subaru

Wrapped in a plume of exhaust,
I follow your car out of town.
Peering in the rear window,
I catch a glimpse of your hair―
gilded gold in the gray afternoon.
Yet your Subaru's worn,
paint faded by road salt and sun,
bumper held on by duct tape,
fingers of rust
digging in the chassis's ribs.
You turn on an interstate
and I return on a bridge―
woven from steel,
wind and concrete, spanning
a river's waves and rippled sand,
it's where you drove in.
And for the months you were here
we too felt suspended in air―
sitting on a threadbare couch
in a tiny apartment,
as the cold seeped
into the bare wood floor
and winter shed pale clothing
over the hedges and shrubs,
burying the Subaru outside.
Now, returning the key,
I open the door
and it feels like you never left―
one bare bulb still glows
out of reach on the ceiling,
lighting the room, shining
like the yellow apples
we'd find in our hands,
with all that we stole
from each other,
​plucked from the ripening air.

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David Cazden's latest collection of verse New Stars And Constellations (Bainbridge Island Press 2024), is available anywhere books are sold.