Back, and with Long Eared Bats

Right. Blogging, blogging, blogging. Quite frankly I’ve failed to do any since November, which is pathetic. But this does give me the chance to make a glorious and unexpected return. So here is another ‘nature’ poem for “The Forage Cap”. It’s yer basic Elizabethan english sonnet, complete with rhyming couplet at the end for that here’s-the-punchline feeling. For a better poem on bats, check out www.poetryarchive.org and look for Les Murray’s ‘Bat’s Ultrasound’.

Long Eared Bats

Saturday night, the bridges become weirs
and thunder shakes the telegraph mast’s wreath
of incongruous ivy. We can hear
the dead low drawn heart-noise above drawn breath
that must seem to your ears like wind shrieking.
We trace our foetal pulses through the wall
of weather, beacon our whispers, seeking
each other through radio-scrambling squall
and rain-static. This code-talking is fine -
and terse as Morse. We cannot share what stirs
in the polyglot hedgerow, the rapine
of the casual fox, expatriate birds
with rough accents and more – what we crave – song!
Who wants to mime the whirlwind for so long?

: 02 Mar 2007 16:37 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem