A Pipistrelle in Winter.

A small rewrite for the season.

Fly instead, should be feeling.
A wing, a dusk and shattered dreaming,
Repose, create, furred life complete
To demonstrate a fleeting sleep.

 

Suppose instead you stay once waked
Suppose preyed eye prick restless state
Searched only for each precious night
A moth, to dust, seeking light.

 

An ice filled window, a leaded pane
A purple sky, stilled weather vane
A screaming moon, reflect frost battered
Uncooled blood prey, its silence tattered

 

Despite still flies, hard reason crushed
Beats still small heart and soft claw touched
Fierce is hate, concern each beating
Awake this time, cold hold is stealing.

 

A small respite, a single flame

A doom filled cold this season blame.

Contrast the night with darkened spire

Of church, of faith, each piece entire

 

In dark winged fold, webbed belfry hold

Accept embracing bright eyed cold.

This winter roars, the ice stick spike
Rage red the hunt, still that it might

Then ghost of all with leathered wing
The crushed body of, this one small thing.

 

Author's Note

A Pipistrelle is the UK's smallest bat. The one's in my loft are hibernating well. The image is mine and is of the loch behind my house in winter. The words are Scots (not Gaelic Scots is a language in its own right).for Merry Christmas.
This is an old one rewritten slightly.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

love this...the smallest bat.
reminds me of Richard Wilbur's poem "Mind"

the restless mind like a bat beating in caverns all alone....and your bat in winter...seeking shelter
but compressed into a frozen state by winter...reminds me of me as a human...so much trouble sleeping...just flying until i merely pass out...then the darkness comes...some respite.

but soon awake to fly again in my mind and out of my mind.
great piece, Ken.
j.

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you so much Jacob and Seasons Greetings to all you an yours.

[Ken Simm.]

I'm with you with the difficulty sleeping.