Boulder It’s a common erasure, I guess, every dip and depression filled in. I’m dragging, it seems, a lifetime behind me with scant tread left under my heels. It must be I’m in my own mind a little weighty. But no, it’s just a dog on the back of my snowshoe, trotting fast to a boulder. Rugged granite etched in frost, tell me, how do you bear having to re-learn every spring, your own face, forgiveness, everything?
Judith Chalmer is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Minnow (Kelsay Books 2020) and is co-translator of two books of Japanese haiku and tanka by poet, Michiko Oishi. Her poems have been published individually in journals such as Poetica, Leaping Clear, Third Wednesday, Lilith, and Quiddity, and in anthologies such as, The Wonder of Small Things, How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, and Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry. In 2023 she attended the inaugural Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference as a scholar. She lives in Vermont, USA where she currently serves on the board of Vermont Humanities.
Amethyst Review 