Judy Kaber

Judy Kaber is the author of three chapbooks, most recently “A Pandemic Alphabet.” Her poems have appeared in journals such as Hunger Mountain (“Fallout”), Poet Lore (She colored the sky a mash”), december (“The Unsuspecting Gardener,” “All That Remains”), Spillway (“Harold Tripp’s Daughter Tells a Story”), as well as many other places. Judy won the 2023 Maine Poetry Contest. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine (2021-2023).

Older Than the Dead

My mother was gone
at sixty-one. Just after
her birthday she broke
away from the world
where she once buttoned
my coat, hushed my wounds,
made me toast, shouted
out the window that it was time
to come in.

My mother is a sound
in my body, a maroon shawl
of wind across my memories.
I’ve called her oak, turned
her into a tree, dove into
her heartwood with bangles

and burgeoning wishes,
feeling about for the pulse
of who she was, the stitches
that held her tight against
the fabric of the world.
I can’t reach her anymore.
That’s just the way of it.

There are no limits
to what you can experience
in life once you go beyond
the gatepost of desire.
Maybe my mother
taught me that. Maybe

each time she sat on the couch,
alive, picked out my cherry red
dress, my matching shoes,
and drove me to church on Sunday,
she was drawing horizons,
opening birdnotes. Not
abandoning me. I’d like

to understand the order
of her going, the motion
that took her through canyons
of life, the way she held
the camera, timed the exposure
to capture borrowed light.