Judy Kaber

Once

we lived in the woods of Mendocino, 
got directions to a secret beach in Caspar,
rode there, three of us jammed in the car, 
following the twisted road until we came 
to the headlands, then down to a beach littered  

with the remains of redwood trees. We made camp,
excited to be the only ones lodged
in that deserted place. I loved you then,
in the dangerous way that only the young
can love. We slept in tents pitched on sand 

or out under the wild language of stars.
We ate brown rice and Hungry Jack pancakes,
abandoned clothes, let the sea enter
our sentences with a cry torn
from the throat of gulls and the slap of wind. 

No house, no table, no chairs, no drawers
full of string, tacks, broken pencils.
We ate with our fingers, watched sheep
look down from the hills, sat
beside a driftwood fire in the long noose 

of evening. Before the scabbed hand
of the world split us apart, before
I plucked tomatoes from dying vines,
that place taught me to take what beauty
I can from this country, to shove it deep 

in my lint-lined pocket along with coins
and keys, so I can pull it out when I need it, 
when the great bear comes from his cave, 
saliva wet on his jaw, in his eyes the fierceness 
of evil, the black stone that the world has become.

---

Judy Kaber is the author of three chapbooks, most recently A Pandemic Alphabet (Poets Table, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, december, Hunger Mountain, Spillway, and elsewhere. She was the second-place winner in the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest (2016), the winner of the Maine Poetry Contest (2021), and a finalist in the Maine Chapbook Contest (2022). She was the poet laureate of Belfast, ME from 2021 to 2023.