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).