Ruth Bavetta

Desert Scene

The empty highway raced
toward a pinpoint on the horizon.
Miles on, to the left, three cars
clustered at the side, one of them
upside down. My husband lifted

his foot from the accelerator, drifted
to a stop and we all twisted
as he backed up. Several people
stood around a car whose wheels
spun slowly in the air.
It slanted precipitously

toward a ditch where a man
lay motionless, eyes open
to the bright and empty sky. Something
was under the car, a small
dark shadowy thing, propping
it up. A woman pushed

forward, “I’m a nurse,”
and crawled to the shape
under the car. “There’s a faint pulse.
She’s alive. If we all push, we can tip
the car off her into the ditch.”
Another woman said “But

we’d be tipping it onto her father.”
And while they stood there
arguing about tipping a car
onto a dead man in order to save
his daughter, her pulse faded
into the desert sand and disappeared.

 

Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over was published in 2022.