Bats

Black and Grey Agate Bracelet

• • •

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting--
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night, and echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.

Excerpt from Bats by Randall Jarrell