In her brilliant debut collection, Judith Lee Herbert weaves a tapestry of beauty and loss, luminescence and aging. These accessible and compelling poems combine memory with incandescent moments… Judith Lee Herbert’s words move with exceptional grace between lost past and evocative present, with as fine of a touch as can be found in poetry.

--- Lee Slonimsky, author of Consulting with the Swifts and Lion, Gnat.

North Star

Cobalt blue enamel sky,
diamond studded crescent moon adorn
the gold locket of my charm bracelet.
Gift from my parents when I was young,
it holds the image of my mother
as she journeys to a place
without words or memory.

Dana, my one and only Baby Buddha,
told me when she was three,
“Someday, I won’t need you anymore.”
At eighteen, it is her time
to explore the brightness of the stars
and the vastness of the universe.

As constellations move in the night sky,
my position is shifting.
I navigate my way in space,
holding on to the sacredness of love,
my own internal North Star.

• a poem from the collection, Songbird