CHAPTER 14 of THE ANEMONE SIDECAR - Ravenna Press

Judith Skillman: four poems
The Horseshoe Bat
Perhaps due to the luck
drawn from its name
this one is not like the others.
Perched, it puts out the call
for insects at intervals.
Suppose the hours
of an entire night
were this easy to spend.
In the limbs of a tree
overlooking a field.
Or, digits spread membranetight
to make kite-skin,
hunched between twinned wings,
as if waiting to be mistaken
for a bird.
A mere seventeen meters
serve to take the call
of what it hungers for.
There will be no circling
past transplanted palm trees
grown now into the gutters
of the house next door,
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