Love Song of the Bat with Vertigo
Oh your hair! How I long to stroke your hair with the tip of my wing
like the giant in that book about mice and men, so I escape your attic,
a mouse with wings, soaring above the mousetraps smeared with
peanut butter in your kitchen. You shriek at me and hand the giant
standing next to you a bat, not a bat like me, but a bat for hitting
baseballs, now a bat to hit bats, so I sail high and away, four times
around the room, a fastball slipping from the hand of the sweaty pitcher
who puts the tying run on first in the ninth inning. You toss the giant
a bucket to catch me, and suddenly I am incarcerated up against
the wall, so I beat my wings inside the bucket the way a drummer
improvises a solo, a song for you that silences the chatter in the nightclub.
The bucket dumps me into the night air, a bat with vertigo, and I flap
away upside down, searching the darkness for the light glimmering
from your hair, like the waterfall in that cave where all good bats go to die.
