Early this morning, voices
through the bedroom window.
Men in the canyon below,
trying to rip away the vines
strangling the native oaks.
Dampness blurs the horizon.
The sounds rise and fall
like wind curling around the hills —
but the leaves are motionless
and the air is still.
Two squirrels clatter across the roof
and leap into the olive tree.
A crow watches from the dying pine.
Across the street a flag hangs limp.
The delivery truck heads into the curves
at 60 miles an hour.
Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. Her books are Fugitive Pigments, What’s Left Over, Embers on the Stairs, Selected Poems, and Flour, Water, Salt. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretence, prejudice, and sauerkraut.