Bat, and: World

Bat

Once I was a pearl in a lobe, oblongand exuding subtle phosphorescence.

Say you knew me then, my nibbler, tonguerof cold jewels. I was a bobbin wound tight.

All recoil and little give. You knew mebest as a belled collar, a bird-alarm,

broadcasting my ward's intent. How I wishedto be a helicopter, swift helix

unanchored, all mine but for gravity …

There was a cave at dusk we waited at:

bats, bats, bats black into mussel-shell sky.Upright and censorious, they spearheaded

lampposts where insects nightly met, haloof moonlight blurring wings to soft slurries.

The night was clear and quick and full. It ranus the long course of it, garbled, grateful

as nests. What we drank was venom-like, sweetit seemed but didn't kill us. At the bar

everyone spoke of leaving but no oneleft. The crowd murmured and chirped in surges.

We moved by blind touch, mapping as we met.We missed the bodies slipping back, and dawn.

What is sound to the open air or smellto the salted sea? The clouds rebuff all

shrill calls as if deaf. Kept thus safe, we dive.Plunder the light, plunder the bulbs' bounty,

the open sky all ripe and buzzing, fullas banquet boards we swarm down so weighted

it is a wonder the walls will have us.

What was I once? Caved, kept, a modest shock.Star of film and dream. Someone's night of slate

and sweat. Foreshadow and plot twist, intenton entanglement, I'd dart and scurry.

You in the midnight startle. In the floorwhere no entrance shows. Stairwell. Woodpile. Glint

on the drab wall where once a mirror hung.On sleeping lips. A twitch that says you've been.

You were here and stayed. I find you, suddenstaccato flutter, waking's blur, cornered,

a bracket of dark matter, glossy: gone.

World

In a woods, a wide carpet of bluebellsand the dim sky just visible througha lattice of leaves; the fragile air, finesheen on dampening sleeves. I am made clean,porcelain and tulle, skimming the bright ground.The photograph a surprise, then, this girllumped in wool, skin the color of dull clay,a post sunk in a swamp of startling blue.Forgive me my vanities. I had thoughtI could be made a mirror.

Parallelto the ponda large toadstill as stoneshining throatcatching lighta signalone might thinkmistakenly.

Where are you in this small wooden tableau?Under the weather, the mantle, singingoff your mudded boots?

Oneeyeon anoaktreefromwherealowhootandoneshuttighttokeepoutthedark.

Fearsome is a field where a herd movesall lowing some with horns and drifting closethey of the curious great orbs blinkingwith sweet menace or dumb beneficencewho will lope ever faster to keep pace.

I had intended once to know these things.Particulars of light, velocitiesand wing spans. The least characteristicsof green-spored lepiota. I do not.

Recall the blinding passage the ice made.Treetops were bowed to the road, shivering a rain of wreck and thunder between restsin which the only light was shine. Your breathwas held and blood halted in veins. Weathermade this over, cast this kindred of spellsthat broke only when all else fell to ruin.

I had thought I could be made a mirror.Bright ground which held me to it, filigreeresurfacing greenly. I am solidas any stump nursing old wounds undera pinkish sky. Just there, the tallest treestanding, cracked through to the taproot, one branchleafing. The floor a heaven of mushrooms.