Turning
I walk faster down the hill
as if shackled to a ghostly stranger.
Age now travels swifter than the years do.
A mockingbird stands guard. Mourning
doves huddle in the shaded eaves.
This rainy winter is reluctant to depart.
Down the hill behind the house
early daylight slides.
Early daylight slides
down the hill behind the house.
This rainy winter is reluctant to depart.
Doves huddle in the shaded eaves.
A mockingbird stands guard, mourning.
Age now travels swifter than the years do.
As if shackled to a ghostly stranger,
I walk faster down the hill.
Did You See That?
A man falling out of the sky,
a star falling into the sea,
the lover you thought you’d forgotten,
the seasons that went astray.
A mother calling from home,
the rain that wept for desire,
a dog who can’t find his bone,
the summer that came to stay.
The winds that twisted the air,
the rivers whose mouths were filled.
The currents that swallowed the ice,
the tide splashing over the fields.
In the low desert
spidery arms of ocotillos, raised
against a sky dry as hope
sun released from the door of morning
toward the hammers of afternoon
script left in the silt by the sidewinder
as it slips from a crack between rocks
road leading to a horizon that never forgives
someday we may arrive
where dried fronds of palms
no longer sweep the curling shingles of the roof
where all is cool and green and we dream
by a pool and die forgetting the sun.
Descant
A loon sprinkles leaves of sorrow
over the stillness of a lake.
Seagulls cast harsh calls
that rise, then fade
as the horizon slices the sun
to a single sliver.
From a pine on an icy hill
a snowy owl whoops and whispers
of secrets known and now forgotten.
By the edge of a river far away
a black-crowned night heron
casts a melody of shadows.
The mockingbird’s multilateral
sonata, the cadenza of the western
meadowlark,
my neighbor on her patio
playing her violin.
Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, Nerve Cowboy, Atlanta Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, prejudice, and sauerkraut.
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