2 poems by Linda France

Bat and I

I cannot ignore

the bat sitting on my chest.

She smells my darkness.

Night comes too soon.

I try to love her,

untie the knot

of my breath

beneath the milky iris

of moon and stars

that break my heart

into pieces I no longer

recognise. Two-winged,

night is balm

as well as torment.

Bat and I fly.

Crepuscular

As day lost its skirmish with night, he circled my garden.

At first I mistook him for my car but my car is white

and bats, even those uncommonly large, are darkest brown,

skin-and-fur-brown – they deepen and blur into black.

He moved weightily through the dusk air, lolloping

like a winged horse, eery nocturnal Pegasus.

A wild walloping like sheets on a washing line

on a winter’s day whipped me out of my shock.

Emboldened by curiosity, I stood still to inspect him

more closely, even though every bone in my body

clamoured to hotfoot it away. This bat, larger than life,

was curious too. He swooped near enough for us to share

a breath, spritz of thrilling musk. A high-pitched whistle

found its mark in my chest, an arrow from another realm

pinning me to this one, the tiny hairs of my tiny span.

For a handful of seconds I was upended, switched on,

a bare lightbulb in an empty room, fizzing, till – phut!

He dissolved in the dark, nothing but a few spots of blood.

_____________

Linda France’s latest collections include Laurel Prize winner The Knucklebone Floor (Smokestack 2022) and Startling (Faber & New Writing North 2022), which includes work from her Climate residency with Newcastle University & New Writing North 2020-22. She won the 2013 National Poetry Competition and was Michael Marks Awards Environmental Poet of the Year 2022-23. Linda is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Northumberland, UK. [lindafrance.co.uk]