Bats!
2005-07-28 12:29 a.m.

Second one today.

Tonight, the Samurai returned from aikido practice around 9, just ahead of a thunderstorm. He came bursting in, babbling,"He loops in crazy figures half the night! He loops in crazy figures!" At first, I though maybe he'd been kicked in the face again, or landed on his head a bit too hard after a throw. I asked him what on Earth he meant, and he dragged me to the window. Circling wildly in the streetlight just outside our bedroom was a small brown bat, scarfing up bugs. We went outside and stared up at his gyrating dance, fascinated. I hope he lives in our attic.

The line the Samurai was babbling is from "The Bat," by Theodore Roethke. He used to teach it to his 9th graders, because it's a cool example or iambic pentameter and heroic couplets. Here it is:

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.
His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.
He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Go outside at dusk, and look up! Bats are cool.

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