bat poem

night flying has begun again
my small room is inside
the large terror of a bat
I want to say moon pallor
softens its fright
but that’s a skylight effect
a lie decoratively human
I should never have faced
the room south, it pines
for warmth, it spooks
the bat, little delta wing
little mouse, hooked tinily
to a desperate corner
in between each frantic
velvet swoop       this need
to dress the thing in beautiful
it puts the bat in abeyance
the moon slides out of frame
it is true all the same
the bat’s fur is a silk
a flight’s aerodynamics
sleek and necessary
my skin’s own short hairs
unable to lift the lightest
of roofs       the only possible
truce is to throw open the doors
to bat’s panic and dark chills
their footless presences
push the room to the walls
this is the tyranny of built
to be shelter and cage in one
almost I eschew all tools
but the wild inclements
have bred a softness in the room
and by morning the bat is gone
and the only lips here are blue
and silent and wingless

the red splinter

entering not clean and quick
but dream slow, the thick edge
of a nerve, the days rising and setting
on enough ache to remind some act
it needs to happen, to exert itself—
when I sign in the gates are bolted
when I sign out they’re still enchained
something never enters but stays
behind, all the meanwhile the work
in there cultivating the deaf ear:
‘some things are not for sale’
I’ve said it before, this pledge
that swears it is the silk of nurture
that the trouble is someone else’s yard
but of course there’s a wheels
at the gate, a panting, a busy petrol
a taking of the young as donation
a promising to abide—everything
I have done the wheels will do
and when I break they will laugh
the red splinter driven in at last
then self then silence then shell

About the Poet
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