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.

Cleopatra Mathis’s most recent collection of poetry is White Sea. She teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.