A Long Strange Trip by Ruth Bavetta

They say the human body replaces its cells every seven years.
That means I have been 12.285714 different people.

The timid little girl who ate toast and tea with her grandmother
became the teenager who ordered a hamburger and fries

for breakfast and wanted to be left alone became the young adult
enamored with guitars and folksingers and spaghetti with garlic

became the adult who married twice and was happy
with sardines instead of macaroons, crackers rather than cookies.

But now I’m old and have fallen under the sweet spell
of Cherry Garcia, an extended, rambling improvisation

of the melody of maraschinos, grace notes of chocolate,
soaring solo of cream. I want to make things up as I go along,

wandering among the notes, seeking the sweetness,
longer and longer and longer before the music stops.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.