down from the sycamore tree,
large as a leaf, burnt orange, not green,
softly parachutes in front of me
to land nose first on hot cement.
A bird? A butterfly? No—a beast!—
its pink mouth open to show fangs,
my impulse to grab a nearby shovel
and decapitate it. Instead, I slide
the clicking creature into a shoebox
and contact Corky at animal control
who later calls to tell me that it’s a red bat,
rare and abandoned, ravenous, not rabid,
a baby that must be held in order
to swallow formula from a dropper.
—
Rebecca Dougherty is a sixth generation Californian who has lived in the Sacramento Valley her entire life. She has graduate degrees in education and technology and taught elementary school for ten years. She belongs to a poetry workshop group. Her poems have been published in Volume Poetry.
