Bears who are Bats

Bears who are Bats. © Mike Absalom 2009

Among the Japanese plums in the garden
as spring hurriedly awakens,
hibernating bears fly up agile as butterflies
from the black tunnels of their underground dreaming.
They paw the air foolishly
and reach for the horrid moon
with lunatic inevitability
imagining they are bats.

The delusion of bat-hood
Is not theirs alone.
I watch a kangaroo rat lurking under the lupins.
At dusk
as it does every night,
it will jump hoppity hop over the orange harvest moon
and vanish into the thin air
of higher attitudes.

I am hoping that with a little uncharacteristic edgemanship
Batification might appeal to you.
You might even dare then to emulate the rat-bear pioneers.
I will be able to give you a bunk up.
The unkempt and hairy turbulence of my Welsh-Irish genetic inheritance guarantees my necessary instability.
And you,
well, don’t blush,
but you already have your zonk-pills.