J.P. Dancing Bear-IV

 

 

Gacela of Twilight Bats

 

          for Carol Thistlethwaite


 

 

The twilight reveals the edges at play in pitch

and echoes. The colonies of bats awaken—

the music of night arriving in a building choir.

 

The silhouettes of skylines break apart, little

pieces of the land, fluttering skyward, land

becoming night, the dark matter of space.

 

You hear them calling out hungry, hungry

for the bright insect wings of stars. Each bat

scissors and zigzags the sky into smaller, smaller

pieces. You can hear the tattered twilight

flap and flutter, flags of sky spiraling, falling

beneath the bat night rising.

 

You come out at this hour, now slowly moving

earlier, earlier against the October days, fascinated

by the chorus of bat wings becoming night.