Elster Creek: Dark View | Allan Lake | Poetry
My partner is afraid of bats
in a world where anti-vax fanatics
deny the existence of a pandemic
as people drop in all directions.
She fears that a bat will latch
onto her neck and sip her blood
in a country where major banks –
like casinos – massage the trusting
in order to siphon their savings.
I’ve never met anyone who was attacked
by a bat and neither has she. Yet images
of bats tangled in long curly locks, blood-
thirsty bats gorging themselves on warm
human blood take flight from a dark cave
in her mind every time we walk along
that maligned little artery.
Fear methed-up teenagers, lone wolves
who prey on Little Reds, drunks who
punch. Fear any men who stare.
Until capture, a rapist frequented this
unlit path. Still, she fears bats, cringes
at the slightest possibility of bat attack
when she hears their cries, hears flap-
ping of those leather wings, sees their
unholy shapes against moonlit sky.
Pleads: Just tell me it’s an owl. No,
it’s a bat, one of Nature’s miraculous
creations that feeds on mosquitoes and
fruit and acquired a rotten reputation
because some Gothic fantasist couldn’t
keep his hand off his pen. More recently,
we can thank those who devour our virus-
ridden cousins. We talk to fill the
silence, we talk about other dark things
and our habitat as we walk the gauntlet.
She keeps hood up, mask on.
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Bio:
Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled ‘My Photos of Sicily’, was published
by Ginninderra Press. It contains no photos, only poems.
