Sherry Chandler

David Cazden

My friend-in-poetry David Cazden was just awarded an Al Smith Fellowship, no small accomplishment, and I want to celebrate him by sharing one of his poems with you. He said I could choose, and though it’s hard to pick among his many excellent poems, I decided to go with this one because my own 36th wedding anniversary is just a couple of weeks away. And anyway, it’s kinda neat to see a poem with a cat box in the middle of it. Sort of like home.

The poem is from Dave’s first full-length collection, Moving Picture, which can be purchased from Barnes and Noble, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Anniversary

I shampoo jojoba oil and suds
between my fingers and into your hair,
scrub scalloped soap
along your shoulders. But the water’s hot,
the bath fragrant.
I mistake its heat on your skin for a blush,
red as an apple peel.
You say nothing, stretch back
as against an ocean.

Tomorrow will mark ten years
of awakening
in orange sheets of sunlight.
The cat box will be cleaned.
The pots will be quiet as the pots,
the spoons will be the spoons.
But we will be more than ourselves.
We will not drown

as the water flows against the walls,
your arm hanging down
on the half-dry bathroom rug,
moving over me, mindful of itself.

— David Cazden, reprinted by permission of the author.

Here’s a nice review of Moving Picture at The Gazebo, an online poetry community of which Dave has been a citizen in good standing for years.

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