The Bat

- Ellen Bryant Voigt

Reading in bed, full of sentiment

for the mild evening and the children   

asleep in adjacent rooms, hearing them   

cry out now and then the brief reports   

of sufficient imagination, and listening   

at the same time compassionately   

to the scrabble of claws, the fast treble   

in the chimney—

                      then it was out,

not a trapped bird

beating at the seams of the ceiling,

but a bat lifting toward us, falling away.

Dominion over every living thing,

large brain, a choice of weapons—

Shuddering, in the lit hall

we swung repeatedly against

its rising secular face

until it fell; then

shoveled it into the yard for the cat   

who shuttles easily between two worlds.

from: The Forces of Plenty, Copyright 1983