In a cave on a farmer’s ancestral grounds,
we scrambled toward its darkest pit, soles
slipping on wet rocks, hands fumbling for walls
coated thick in — we later learned — guano,
and when we flooded the ceiling with light,
we gasped. Clustered by the dozen to share
body heat, they hung like chandeliers.
We prodded with flashlight beams,
swirled our wrists to mimic their swooping.
Bodies began to drop, one then another then another,
too small for a thud, some hairless and milky and still blind,
and we watched, not knowing
that when roused from torpor
they lose weeks of sustenance,
or how to stop the falling.
Note: rasque, n. from rue, to regret + bourrasque, a tempest (Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows 187)
This poem first appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review (2023).
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Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of the poetry collections Cemetery Ink (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), Immigrant Model (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) and Father Dirt (Alice James Books, 2010). She is graduate program director and professor of English at Monmouth University (New Jersey) and former poetry & translation faculty in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Drew University (New Jersey).
