Love Song of the Bat with Vertigo

Oh  your hair! How I long to stroke your hair with the tip of my wing

like the giant in that book about mice and men, so I escape your attic,

a mouse with wings, soaring above the mousetraps smeared with

peanut butter in your kitchen. You shriek at me and hand the giant

standing next to you a bat, not a bat like me, but a bat for hitting

baseballs, now a bat to hit bats, so I sail high and away, four times

around the room, a fastball slipping from the hand of the sweaty pitcher

who puts the tying run on first in the ninth inning. You toss the giant

a bucket to catch me, and suddenly I am incarcerated up against

the wall, so I beat my wings inside the bucket the way a drummer

improvises a solo, a song for you that silences the chatter in the nightclub.

The bucket dumps me into the night air, a bat with vertigo, and I flap

away upside down, searching the darkness for the light glimmering

from your hair, like the waterfall in that cave where all good bats go to die.