Roots and Rivers
Kentucky poet David Cazden explores the intricate connections between memory, nature, and the passage of time in two vivid and evocative verses.
CALLED HOME
I tasted the tang
of lead paint off the garage
where I learned to dribble and shoot,
practicing until the basketball
folded its wings into my palm.
I breathed in cleaner
Mom used in the bathroom―
a distillation of pine forests
and tree shadow.
I took things into my body
that would never leave,
carrying them with me,
visiting after she died.
In the backyard, months of rain
turned to dandelions
along the back boundary
where I’d slip under a chain link fence
to an abandoned coal pile,
walking past the iron spines
of railroad tracks, along thickets
of pipe vine, wild grape, hemlock
and thistles that wore
violet eyeshadow in summer.
From that far place,
Mom called me home, her voice
echoing over the driveway
through the lot next door,
to the rusty fence,
then to my ears
and fields beyond.
STREAM
Trickling through the reeds
in the wispy dawn,
a stream has run for miles
in circuits in my arms
and inlets of my body,
depositing silt
in hidden basins.
So most of us die
from too much or too little
of something―mud,
sunlight, moon―anything
that casts its spell
across the water.
Outside, curtains of cloud
draw closed, and bunchgrass
kicks in the foothills.
I lie in bed,
sensing the stream
bending within.
Perhaps my old self
still sits on the banks,
but here, cattails spiral
in starred constellations
and the stream passes near,
snapping its wrists at mayflies
before turning back
to the narrows.
Yet I think I’m not done:
I’ve not had enough
of dusk’s dark skin
on my own,
not enough sunsets
streaking red rouge
on my hands,
over the roads and front porch
and peeling wood siding
of the house where I’ve grown old.
I feel I’m not done
even as a storm
wraps over the roof
and the rock maples sway,
filled up with spirit,
drinking their own sugar,
flashing into flame.
