by Judy Kaber
The end of May 1971 when the sky
shone like a white room we finally moved
to Maine, that place of grace, of promise,
of all our clumsy dreams. Go back to the land
like a woman divorced who changes her mind
and marries the same man again.
Or a river that leaves its bed, meanders
across fields only to return in flood rush
to the hard stones, the violent dithyramb of spring.
We were looking for change,
different than the days we spent in the little
city with rough bars on the street
by the ocean, sailors laughing, stumbling,
cursing their way along. As if that weren’t
wild enough, we wanted a savage life
without napkins or beds or pillows.
We wanted to see the pop of stars, to taste
the face of the earth without a mask.
Nothing worked out the way we thought.
One Christmas a chimney fire. Another winter night
copper pipes that ran inside the stove’s firebox
lost their weld and left us shivering under
blankets. The snow ate us, left us scarred.
Our lives skewed in odd directions. I wrote
poems. He read Wilhelm Reich. When I made
sandwiches, I thought about escape layered
between bacon and cheese. Our unhappiness
filled so many crates, it squeezed us into
corners. I could tell you the rest, but why bother?
This is a gun with no trigger. A bullet without
a target. It’s the way life goes, stumbling in woods,
hunting the long-gone white-tailed dreams.
Judy Kaber is the author of three chapbooks. Besides having been published previously in The Fourth River, her poems have appeared in joutnals such as Pleiades, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem, “Sword Swallowing Lessons,” was featured on “The Slowdown.” Judy won the 2021 and 2023 Maine Poetry Contest. A Maine Literary Award winner, her book, Landscape With Rocks, Sky, Nails, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine (2021-2023).