#batappreciationday Timeline

145d

Beneath a Mona Lisa smile you’re splayed
for pinning. I recall the callipered
shadow of Vitruvian Man, from caverns
and hollowed trees to this small page…

—Morag Smith, “Renaissance Bat”
from DON’T. EVEN. ASK. TOO. HOT. New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

Today, 17 April, is Bat Appreciation Day 🦇

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws42/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #bats #BatAppreciationDay

Morag Smith
RENAISSANCE BAT

(From a watercolour, circa 1790, Asian Lesser False
Vampire)

Beneath a Mona Lisa smile you’re splayed
for pinning. I recall the callipered
shadow of Vitruvian Man, from caverns
and hollowed trees to this small page.
Notice the artist’s worship of your thumb-claws
– they hold up sails of wings that can make
the air water for swimming in. Deep time
echoes in those downy caves of ears.
We drew pyramids and squares, you listened,
carried the pox for fifty million years,
ate our locust plagues and held within
your matchstick bones what’s near forgotten:
that God’s an insectivorous vertebrate
thirty-four grammes in weight.

ALT

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145d

In dusk, from in among the walnut tree
and its bearing down upon the damaskina,
although we never see the bat unwrap
like a sticky sweet from the paper…

—WN Herbert, “The Bat”
from OMNESIA (Bloodaxe, 2013)

https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poems/poem/103-22731_THE-BAT

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #bats #BatAppreciationDay

THE BAT
W. N. Herbert

In dusk, from in among the walnut tree
and its bearing down upon the damaskina,
although we never see the bat unwrap
like a sticky sweet from the paper

of suddenly frictionless voiceless wings,
it begins to bi-, to trilocate, to be
anywhere at once in air's old film, wavering
with half-seen insects – it's in the field,

the garden, even underneath the canopy
of vineleaves that, by day, shades the little patio.
We watch the sky a dropping sun's turned gray
after an hour of lemon, mango, watermelon –

though this still lets some light be gleaned
through a wing like a sallow, puffed-out cheek,
a torch shone through a bloodless hand,
but gone in the second you understand

as though showing how exactly we must leave
each day – and do – a gathering of senses, sights
too small or intricate to count as insight,
too brief to form what we'd call belief.

The bat, that master of departures, is lost
to night, forgetting as it misses each leaf
and every branch: a figure of omnesia,
the way the world desires to be the past.

ALT

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145d

Seems it's #BatAppreciationDay

These are always hard to photograph against the ridiculously bright ceiling but I have a few more photos of them. Works better in the summer because bringing a lens with metal casing from 0°C into 30° 100% humidity is not going to work.

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