The Bats by Mark Wunderlich

The Bats 

I share my house with a colony of bats.

They live in the roof peak,

enter through a gap.

 

At dusk they fly out, dip

into inverted arcs

to catch what flutters or stings,

 

what can only be hunted at night.

Sunlight stops their flight,

drives them into their hot chamber

 

to rest and nest, troll-faces

pinched shut. I hear them scratch.

In darkness they chop and hazard through the sky,

 

around blue outlines of pines,

pitch up over the old Dutch house

we share. They scare some

 

but not me. I see them

for what they seem—

timid, wee, happy or lucky,

 

pinned to the roof beams,

stitched up in their ammonia reek

and private as dreams.