A Kentucky Goodbye
―1981
By the time I saw you
in skirts of jasmine
and sweaters of dandelion,
it was almost too late.
We were in college
rounding a hill to summer,
taking a gentle slope down.
Then on a day by a pond
we watched dragonflies hover,
measuring distances―shore to horizon,
reed to water lily, sunlit rock
to wisp of brown hair.
Something was being calculated
beginning to end.
We talked, tossed rocks,
braved mosquitoes
fine as newsprint
on the way to the car.
After driving to your apartment,
we watched Jason Robards in 1000 Clowns
and took angel dust
which made the lights shimmer.
We could smell fruit
off night-blooming trees
and the lavender scarf
of the wind. You told me
you were leaving, as the angel
dust settled like dusk
in the pond behind us,
filling our footsteps, sifting
down strip-mined hills
on grass soft as catsfur, clinging
with this restless glow
we still feel
in the deep hollows and valleys
in the lines of our hands.
David Cazden has two books and is working on his third. His poetry has appeared in places like Passages North, Nimrod, Crab Creek Review, The Louisville Review, Still: The Journal, Susurrus and are forthcoming in The McNeese Review. He lives in Danville, Kentucky.
