Poetry: From the November/December 2009 issue | See all poetry
Bat
I don’t have to wait—evening balances on edge
and it comes, batting the tame light.
Here, then there, on and off in sight.
Out of my silence, a flap,
then back in it: where did you go, little rag,
shape of black purpose?
*
Evidence above: no begging
wildness gone wilder or haywire
engine, no jumble in his
darts and dives. Don’t watch me
insisting over my head, nothing random
and that’s what I’m afraid of:
*
my longing in the 9 p.m.
wasting light that means to tell me something,
a frequency so high it’s
unhearable, uninventable. Membrane
in that home: a dead tree
leaning, shorn-off.
*
Avoiding it, I am drawn to it. The curse
I fear to be there always,
even in the bright day,
upside down, hung and sleeping:
the hanged man with his clarity
is what I’ve made of that body—
whose job is to fly out of the dark, then return.
My job is to glimpse it.
