Every autumn, I write a story for Douglas, my husband. There's usually an element of supernatural in them. This year, I decided to attempt a poem. I'm not a poet. I really ought to take a class. If it rhymes and is rhythmic, I get it - it's a poem. But I know that a poem doesn't have to rhyme. I love Emily Dickinson, and she doesn't often rhyme. So many poems look like prose that has been scattered about on a page. That's what I've got here. I hope you like my attempt. Happy Autumn!
Autumn comes
in stunning death—a burst of beauty before dormancy;
Our world
leans into darkness—the seen becomes the unseen.
Late afternoon
loses its leisure and imparts urgency, dread.
The cozy buffer
of leaves surrenders and exposes us to earth’s canopy, its overstory.
The bareness clicks
and ticks in Morse-like rhythm, like giant women knitting.
Nocturnals chitter
their restlessness; their time with the day-dwellers unnaturally increases, and
when these worlds mix—it gets territorial.
But I won’t
relinquish my time, though they claim it in its darkness.
Nor will they sleep
through this new abundance.
Onyx ink blots
twitch and pitch from branch to branch, from tree to tree, through earth’s
breath to the pale moon!
—The restless displaced
in nature’s spirit.
Bloodied
spiders’ webs hang fat from trees, silently unthreatened, filtering the last glow
of sunset.
How the poor, trapped
creatures must have suffered . . .
The thought is
quelched when the web takes a fearful flight, and its atonal call shreds my
nerves.
The blood, not
old, nor even fresh, is vibrant, pulsing.
Recalled legends
of fanged moths and wicked angels manifest themselves as these ghost bats.
Still the
black masks flit, more absent of light than the night,
And the ghosts,
absorbing every spectral hue—
All light hidden
merely in their being—
Evidence Nature
enveloping Nature.
Their caves
blown and mined, their trees cast into our homes,
The displaced
seek out the illicit dwellings—whether of sticks or of bricks, by the feathered
or fleshed—and those that dwell therein.
I, rationed by
God, with two eyes, two ears can’t perceive them as they me.
My hands,
fearful of these critters whose senses are keener even than my thoughts, don’t
help.
Most threats
lie within, nestled up against all our fears.
So, make of the
Chiroptera what you will with your myths and legends
(flying
rodents, their potion-rich wool; their thirst for blood)
What they are
is enough.
We haven’t
time to fear the shards of their calls.
The hunt is silent; only in the attack do they shriek.
I owe thanks to Rebecca Giggs of The Atlantic. I was inspired by her article Why We're Afraid of Bats (November 2020). Thank you, Ms. Giggs.
