ManicDDaily

September 2014

On this fall porch noon,
as dark shutters are shuffled in and out
for repainting, and the farther world
reshuffles wars I try not
to read about,
the little bat remembers
grey,
a host of slats where he’s packed
his storm-cloud self,

till his wooden shield swoops dayward, shutter
carted away, and he, swung, sweeps the air
like a winged wind,
spanned panic banging against brightness
but not quite the screen door,
till he sites himself, unsighted, on a small spare strip leaning
wall to floor, the wood
that grey-as-a-battleship he knows
so well.

Slipping his quiver behind its two-inch breadth,
side-sliding his cling
into its stripe of shadow, he tries again
to roost.

I confess to not much liking
bats,
to, when they are near,
swooping fearfully, sometimes able
to pack my whole self under a low table or behind
a locked door,
but now I stop my sweeping
of the porch, filled with such fellow feeling
for his upside-down tremor,
that I call for help for him
and not for me,
and wait there with him
till relief comes with a soft net,
taking only a few steps back
into the unblinkered blue.

******************************
For Grace’s prompt about September remembering on With Real Toads.   A bat did hide behind that little piece of wood after his shutter was moved away.  (I know I call almost all poems drafts, but I truly do feel very uncertain about the ending–and beginning–ha!–of this one.)

Also, sorry for the repeated plug, but my new book, Nice, is at last available in paper and on kindle–only 99 cents.  It is an interesting book, especially for someone wanting to go back to, or know more about, 1968.

Since I’m in plug mode (!), please also check out my other books, Nose Dive (humorous novel), Going on Somewhere (Poetry), and 1 Mississippi (Elephants!)