David Swerdlow

Two Poems

THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS HAND ON TOWARD
NOVEMBER. THE COY CHILD BOWS

into her mother’s unfolded hands where she feels her own
       breath and is made

happy. The chrysanthemums are white and lean onto the brick
       path

where the child walks past, where the child listens to the sound
       she makes

as she walks. This is a painting. There are no other children, no
       other

chrysanthemums. November will impoverish them. The child
       and her mother

know this. Their blue and white dresses have gathered here
       where the hemlocks

confer abundance, confer poignancy. This is where the light will
       come from,

and this is where the light will end, because the painting is
       dramatic, because

the chrysanthemums, and the child, and her mother are an
       arrangement that exceeds

their story, and the telling of their story. In a month, it will
       begin to snow.

The sky has been painted without birds, and the clouds are thin.
       The child

who will be gone is looking into the hemlocks, into the
       shadowed gaps

that will fill with snow and weigh the branches down.  

IN A WEEK OR TWO, MY LOVE,
THE MAPLE WILL BE EMPTY

In a week or two, all this vanishing
will have been accomplished. We’ll monitor the cardinal
floating over the stiff field. Already our eyes
narrow toward what looks like knowledge
in the form of acceptance. Vigilance is what you see
in the cornfield now, rows and rows of the cut down
stalks, their remainders rising
a few orderly inches above the dirt. If we were evangels,
if we had more hope for the dead, if our stories
could be confirmed, the cardinal’s flight might verify
our love. The flaw we have found in emptiness
is the flaw we have found in certainty. Come now,
we shall fill the rooms with ourselves.