Our talk smells of smoke and uncertainty,
creates a haze in the room. You smoked once,
I never did. We shuffle the deck, deal out
the cards, watch for the wild ones and aces.
Pleasure rises from routine, an accidental
beauty that settles over us. We grip
our down cards, follow the pulse of deuces
and queens as they hit the table. Outside
your wood, stacked in a neat pile, seems
rust-colored, forgotten. A trick of light.
We stand now and then, to stretch, to let
our hips remember balance, movement.
Four of us play, coats hung in the vestibule.
Our escape, the vessel that carries us
away from the coast, that flutes past all
the disasters—husbands with Alzheimer’s,
knuckles swollen with arthritis, deaths
that visit us in sleep—delivers us to a carpet
of hot, gritty sand. Remember the sailing trip?
The day at Popham beach? The way
Dorothy served us cheese and crackers
on plates shaped like hearts and spades
and clubs? On our last visit with her—
even then—we forged ahead with laughter.
–
Judy Kaber is the author of three chapbooks, most recently A Pandemic Alphabet. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poet Lore, december, Hunger Mountain, and Spillway. She won the 2021 Maine Poetry Contest and was a finalist for a 2022 Maine Literary Award. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine.