Dead Bat
       

When I slid out my heavy thrift-store
hide-a-bed to sweep around it, then
shoved it back, it left behind a bat
that must have been shaken out of
one of the springs where I imagine
it hung for years like a burned-out bulb.
It was frail and almost weightless,
as if a boy (the very boy I'd been)
had glued it together out of balsa sticks
and scraps of papery skin, and I held it up
eye-level as you would a paper plane
and flew it about. Its nasty face with its
needle teeth was turned up, ready
to snatch whatever it saw out there
banking and darting and weaving
ahead in the gloomy afterlife, and after
I'd dropped it with a little rustle
into my big black plastic bag of trash,
I went back twice to see if it had moved.

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Copyright © 2015 Ted Kooser All rights reserved
from Splitting an Order
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission