Batty

While I was attending our neighborhood street fair in Multnomah Village with my kids and mother-in-law, a boy in the parade who was there to represent a local toy store handed me a Magic: The Gathering playing card that featured Vampire Bats. It had on it a picture of a pretty evil-looking bat flying in front of a full moon and a few game related directions that, of course, meant nothing to me. However, beneath the directions was this rather unlikely quote: "For something is amiss or out of place / When mice with wings can wear a human face." It comes from Theodore Roethke's poem "The Bat". What a delightful surprise to get a bit of fabulous poetry at such an unlikely moment--and from one of our own regional poetic superstars at that. Good on you, Magic: The Gathering. Here's the poem:

The Bat

Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.

He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.

His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night

Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,

We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place

When mice with wings can wear a human face.

~cd