Poetics Presents

The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Poetics Presents

Judith Kelly Quaempts

Judith Kelly Quaempts, born in Oregon, lived on military bases until she turned eighteen, married at nineteen and raised four children. She has been a teletypist, police matron, a medical secretary and an executive assistant. She began writing about five years ago and says that what she’s learned about writing so far is that she’ll never learn enough but the journey is filled with discovery. T-Zero is pleased to announce that this is the first time that Judith’s poems have appeared in print.

Passage
Poem #1

I park my car beside a leaning fence
and walk through the woods to this rise
above the river where our sweathouse stood.
Gone now, dismantled when he died.

The frame he built of alder boughs,
blankets, burlap, all burned in one last fire,
the rock pit filled. A rusted dipper
hangs from an alder branch like an epitaph.
The pond steps washed downriver seasons ago.

Once, we crawled on hands and knees
into a warm and humid darkness.
He counted in Indian when he poured -
our sweat rose, then ran
in rivulets down our bodies.
Even our breath grew hot.
Sometimes we talked, more often not.
We seldom needed words.

We rinsed in a pond dammed from the river.
Back and forth we went,
until the rocks grew cold
and our bodies glowed
like embers in the dying fire.

I scrabble down the rocky bank to the river.
Stripping, I feel my way along its moss-slick bottom.
Gray-green water embraces me like a long lost friend.
How blue the sky is.

Copyright © 2004 by Judith Kelly Quaempts

Tiichum Na´shat
Poem #2

He lies in the Indian Cemetery
a stone's throw away from the land-fill
where dogs gone wild
race across the dusty ground.

He faces east, toward home, his mound
littered with small treasures left by friends -
an elk figurine, a plastic Christmas tree,
paint brushes in a jar. His grave is marked
by a rock his sons found on the road.
He chose the spot before he died.
Good company here, he'd said.

Na´shat was his name.
It means sound-before-rain,
crack of thunder after lightning.
He belonged to the Blue Shadow Clan
up on Black Mountain and always said
he'd go home someday.

Copyright © 2004 by Judith Kelly Quaempts