Poems by Ruth Bavetta

Ode to Elena

Who comes in my door without knocking
with a smile on her face, asking first thing how I am,
am I fine, am I tired, estás cansada?

Who drags through the door a broom, a mop,
a galvanized bucket, a battered grey vacuum.
Who finds the clean sheets I’ve forgotten
in the dryer, sometimes for over a week.

Who stretches them over my bed and tucks them tight,
tighter than I’d like, but I’ve never told her that.
Under whose hands my bathroom mirror shines
and shows me more clearly how old I’ve become.

Who sweeps from my kitchen floor the bits of broccoli
I’ve dropped, and the pill my fumble fingers
have shot into the corner by the stove.

Who knows I now sleep on what was my husband’s side of the bed. 
Who knows the secrets of what’s in my trash,
and spattered around my toilet.

Who has shown up every two weeks for seventeen years,
except during Covid lockdown, when I paid her anyway
because, like me, she grows older, and because the salt
of the earth must be cherished.

 

Safekeeping

I keep an extra house key tied
with my car key in the depths of my purse.
In the zipper compartment is my rescue

inhaler for asthma. I put insurance
papers in a box on my desk, and bills

on the dining room table so I don’t forget
to pay them.  I hide my grandmother’s diamond ring

inside a carved-out book, alongside the earrings
my husband gave me years ago.  My insurance

card is always in the glove compartment of my car,
the first car I ever bought alone, the last
car I’ll ever have. I wish I loved it more.

The photograph of my husband
whom I couldn’t have loved more,
is tucked into the edge of the mirror

in my bedroom. When I wake each morning,
I can see him there, and my own face
reflected near him, together only in the glass.

 

Drawing Closer to the Edge

At the distant rim
of the earth where history is lost,

the horizon is written
in a calligraphy of indigo.

Harmony is a skin
that falls short of the perimeter.

Nothing to do but accept
the geometry that led to our undoing.

Time to pause and weave our garlands.
The dead reach out their hands.