VISITATION

—or it was night that entered, tar-hued

and moved inside me new blood. Its star-

pocked fists gave the promise of bats.

I waited for their leather to spill into my window,

for their tiny throats to blow and trill. A bell

some miles away—bats in its mouth—loved

the taste and swayed. Here is a hunger to stir

me. A man could live in the blur

of a hundred hearts, could learn to tame

the eager clapper, which is loneliness

testing the marrow and waking what’s within:

scatter-song, blind and coming on like skin.