{"id":807,"date":"2017-07-10T21:33:48","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T21:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&amp;p=807"},"modified":"2017-07-10T21:33:48","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T21:33:48","slug":"elegy-with-bats-heritage","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/elegy-with-bats-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Elegy with Bats<\/h3>\n<pre><em>                                   Austin, Texas<\/em><\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They poured out from under the Congress Street Bridge<\/p>\n<p>as twilight came on, first a few, then like a dam bursting<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>dark figures plumed through a darkening sky,<\/p>\n<p>bits of ash billowing up\u2014to <em>thousand <\/em>the air,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>as Dante would say\u2014like memories of our sister<\/p>\n<p>swirling around us.\u00a0 She too had darkened in the last years,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>so we strained to recall all of who she was,<\/p>\n<p>her quick mind, her fearless missions, fierce beliefs,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>teacher and human shield\u2014before stroke stole her thought,<\/p>\n<p>and she became for us not unlike the bats, half-seen,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>swarming in jittery clouds.\u00a0\u00a0 My sister, so quick<\/p>\n<p>to fix a problem, fluent in Kierkegaard, Sartre,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Spanish and French, on her last visit had shrunk down<\/p>\n<p>to opinion\u2019s endless sputter of self,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>wanting the last piece of toast, first cup of wine,<\/p>\n<p>the talk focused on her, annoyed by a tree out front,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>insulted by sunflowers next door.\u00a0 S<em>tupid, stupid, stupid,<\/em><\/p>\n<p>she stomped past those bright yellow petals, bonnets<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>brimming each round face.\u00a0 She hated the ones slumped<\/p>\n<p>like dying Christs on their stems.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Pathetic!<\/em> she said, as if anger were the last ember of self,<\/p>\n<p>now without sonar, flitting, aimless, amok\u2014<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>until at the end, my niece said, she was silent, her gaze fixed<\/p>\n<p>on some unknown world no one else could see<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>any more than on that bridge, as the bats dispersed<\/p>\n<p>into the deepening night, we could discern<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>when the last one had flown.\u00a0 Still, we lingered,<\/p>\n<p>our eyes adjusting to shades, densities of dark,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>as if we could see where a last breath, a life goes,<\/p>\n<p>a soul cut loose from the body\u2019s tether.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We stood in a crowd of others, locals and visitors<\/p>\n<p>like ourselves, lingering in the summer night,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the heat of the day finally gone down with the sun,<\/p>\n<p>which had, I reminded myself, not gone down at all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was earth that turned.\u00a0 And there, on the bridge,<\/p>\n<p>the crowd thinning, I had to grasp the rail for balance,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>as the thought filled me: the earth actually spins<\/p>\n<p>day after day in space, no visible string, no pedestal,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>or base to hold us, nothing but that turning,<\/p>\n<p>and the weight, the sweet pull of other celestial bodies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Heritage<\/h3>\n<p>Our grandfather, had he still legs, would be here<\/p>\n<p>on the shore in Point Pleasant, New Jersey,<\/p>\n<p>photographing footprints in dunes.\u00a0 Had he a mouth,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>he\u2019d make a joke and laugh.\u00a0 Had he ever sat with us,<\/p>\n<p>he might have named the stolen horses that rode<\/p>\n<p>our family across the channel, Cork to Scotland,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>and then to the North, newly sober and starched.<\/p>\n<p>We might know what ships and when and why to America.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, my grandmother, had she still hair to unpin<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>in our presence, might have softened her face,<\/p>\n<p>and had she walked with us along the shore, might have<\/p>\n<p>named the shells we loaded into sagging swim caps.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As to our father, had he lived into the 1960s,<\/p>\n<p>into Bull Connor and police dogs, might he have rewritten<\/p>\n<p>the letters disparaging all colors and faiths not his own?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Knowing our family heart, its failure and early blight,<\/p>\n<p>can we at least hope that between clutch and stop, death<\/p>\n<p>had time to work\u2014death\u2019s horses and ships, its lenses,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>hairpins, its hammers and lathes, its endless waves<\/p>\n<p>out there in the North Atlantic, making the water rise<\/p>\n<p>and fall in place, until where we stand near shore<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>it snags, tumbles, throws itself like dice, like bones,<\/p>\n<p>boxcars, snake eyes, chips of quahog, moon snail, tar<\/p>\n<p>aswirl at our feet, tugging the sand out from under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They poured out from under the Congress Street Bridge \/ as twilight came on, first a few, then like a dam bursting&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":808,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[160,285,286,287,288,289],"class_list":["post-807","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-bats","tag-betsy-sholl","tag-end-of-life-issues","tag-family-heritage","tag-grandparents","tag-sisters"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Poems - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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