You know they’re out there,
seeming mice of the air
that in fact make up their own order,
marking skies over
every continent save one.
Now and then you’ll see one
circling a streetlight, or in Austin,
thousands emerging from beneath a bridge,
each translucent wing a work of digits
webbed and radiating across eras.
Among high-rises of a nation’s capital
you’ve heard their sonar chirps and shrieks,
and elsewhere a dry flapping, then felt
the slightest breeze.
Facts keep you from fearing them.
Only a few carry rabies,
and those of your latitude don’t drink blood.
None will lay eggs in your hair.
If no one wants to share an attic
with their waste and ways,
even then they suggest
a wholly other sort of knowing
and inhabiting the world.
For that alone you might miss them
if they disappeared, not to mention
eating all those mosquitoes.
