Little Brown Bat

​1.

That you must fall to fly. That you can live two decades or more.
               That you have young like we do, one per year.

That you make a rich milk to feed your pup and to keep it warm
               fold it between your wings.

That you eat every day half your weight in mosquitoes, found
               by echolocation one winged speck at a time.

That you hibernate in utter torpor, absorbing the fat you’ve stored,
               a very precise amount.

That you were, on that July night, a shy, soft thing, a vibration
               just brushing my left eyebrow.

That you once were once unnumbered as Dante’s leaves in the fall.
               ​That you die from eating the insects

we poison. That you are cut down by wind turbines, not the bla