Bats over the river
I watched the bats flitter and swoop,
One dusky summer evening,
About the river beneath the trees
With their own good reason
For tiny fragments of flying food
That my old eyes can’t see,
Yet they find them through their tiny ears
Oh, better thou than me.
More still come, these flying sprites,
And as the darkness deepens,
Ceaselessly they turn and chase
Other life with its own ends.
I can’t believe in tumbling flight
They have no fun at all
Without sense of endings brought
To those others in their thrall.
© RM Meyer
Winswell Water, July/August 2020
