Daubenton's Bat

After doing our time in there, making it nice
with Live Laugh Love and fairy lights up the stalactites.
After months absorbed in the great maternal shuffle
from prey to milk to tiny mouths. We come out

like an army. Each on our own trajectory, head-first
and screaming, born again. We disperse
and it hits me like too much too fast, my sisters
gone, my body strange and light on its wings.

Meanwhile and all at once, the things on the earth
call up their offerings as though to me in particular
and the sound travels through me like code. I know
where I am and what I am and what I will do now.
There is only darkness and a sound that says
everything is mine to take, and I take it, I take it all.