Our Bat

we were never that bridge in Austin or anything but

in 1990 all you had to do to see a few bats was

wait until dark kicking through lawns waiting

.

for the orange-pink skies to fade to black

.

and while you were waiting for our bats

the children kicked up

dozens and dozens

of toads

how were there ever so many toads?

.

well

the toads have gone wherever all the toads are going

and anyway

this is about our bat

.

what kind of bat is our bat?

i do not know but not the vampire kind

our bat comes out at twilight, chases mosquitoes, and then

disappears into its tree

which could, i suppose, be almost

any kind of bat

that flies rickety and unsure and keeps changing the mind

about whatever direction

it wants to go

.

one year the bats went into hibernation

and never came back

and then another year

and another

.

what happened to our bats?

can't remember the last time i saw a bat

And so the years go by

.

fifth of July, 2010

our bat flew nervous and unsure over the house

rare enough for me to make a note of it

the last bat, says the note, i'd given up on bats

the neighborhood children no longer look up in search of bats

they haven't looked up at anything in years

perhaps they think bats are mythical creatures

henchmen of the vampires and zombies

we see all around us

more and more these days

.

the fifth is the day after the fourth

illegal leftover fireworks going off on all sides

but not here

so

maybe that's why our bat picked our house to fly over

o ur bat seemed to like what it saw

we began to spot them at twilight again

.

never more than three

are these territorial bats?

does such a thing exist?

we have no caves

never seen them sleeping under bridges

tho i'm told they do

probably they get chased out from under bridges

when the pigeons get chased

some of the bats in our town sleep in people's attics

they get rousted there too

there's a guy you pay to do it

.

our bats used to sleep in the neighbor's tree

three two one

yes we're down to one bat again

each night we watch the sunset

watch our bat fly out, circle circle,

then fly back in for the night

into its tree to fold itself

until our bat is just another leaf in shadow

.

no one talks anymore about our bat

no one else seems to see

except one day the neighbor

followed the track of my eyes

and i wonder

because they chopped down the tree

or maybe they chopped it down for another reason

unrelated to o ur bat

.

nonetheless,

our bat takes it personally

each twilight i watch our bat, the last bat,

make its fluttering way to

where the tree used to be

and then around again

and finally

it flits away to disappear

into the branches of the tree

three houses down

.

Photo Credit

Photo of a presumed Little Brown Bat. Carondelet Park May 2017 by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren under CC by 2.0 license.

Author's Note

If you enjoy nature poems inspired by yard critters, here's another one. A true story, though I don't expect anyone to believe it.