About Judith

Judith Chibante returned to her early interest in creative writing after a varied career in education during which she taught poetry in K-12 schools and edited a volume of poetry for teachers; later, she achieved a full professorship in teacher education. Inspiration for her writing is anything that provokes, inspires, annoys, stirs, amuses or soothes. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals, and anthologized in publications of the Ina Coolbrith Circle. A first chapbook, Radio In the Night, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Currently, she is working on a manuscript for her first full volume of poems.

Readers of her poems will discover a reflective observer of daily life; a seeker of meaning in memories (she was raised on a small farm in rural California) and the aging process; and as a giver of care to others.

Cutting Peaches

See the open shed, ragged in the melting mid-August sun. 
Pickers in long sleeves, their faces swaddled in cloth masks, 
dump boxes of golden-fuzzed, freestone peaches 
onto the cutting tables. A thick fragrance fills the morning air, 
the acrid smell of sulphur from the drying houses 
not yet drifting in waves, burning eyes and throats. 

It's a first job: slicing open peach, peach, peach— 
one hand laying down halves on a slatted tray, 
the other reaching, positioning the next peach for the full-circle 
spin of blade. The sharper the knife, quicker your hands, 
the faster trays fill with orbs of yellow flesh. 

You're a country kid--lucky to get summer work 
on Mr. Miyaki's farm. You ride an ancient bicycle 
for the 7am start, claiming a spot on the work line 
out of the drift of smoke, away from the itchy drafts 
from row on row of trees. At season's end, the raw, cut fingers, 
and slow hours of standing convert to riches--a first paycheck, 
your breath gone at money that is yours alone. 

Through the dust of childhood, do you feel it? How you’ve become 
a gear in the huge engine of this life—the picking, cutting, 
the laying out of the harvest?

Photo: Sanger, CA
Judith Chibante

Credentials

  • B.A. English, LaVerne College, LaVerne CA

  • M.A. Education, California State University, Fresno

  • Ed.D. Curriculum & Instruction, University of the Pacific, Stockton CA

  • Post-Doc Studies, Early Literacy Intervention, The Ohio State University

  • Professor Emerita, The California State University

Affiliations

  • Academy of American Poets

  • Ina Coolbrith Circle (Bay Area)

  • California State Parks Foundation

  • CSU-Emeriti, Retired Faculty and Staff Association

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