I, too, was clad in a black robe, but neither a priest nor an ordinary man of the world was I, for I wavered ceaselessly like a bat that passes for a bird at one time and for a mouse at another.
— Basho

I choose for my emblem the bat
and if I had a coat of arms
there would I place it against
a field of twilight gray

for I too take my bearings
in a manner unfamiliar
to solid daylit creatures
and I seem blind to them
my circuits unaccountable
erratic
face to face
I am an ugly creature
hanging in the rafters
of structures not my own

on sufferance
and yet
not wholly ineffectual
I can but tell myself
if not for me what insects
what inexorable buzzing
what pinpricks and disease
beyond Egyptian plagues

This article appears in March 2025.

Lance Le Grys is the author of the poetry collection Views from an Outbuilding and the chapbooks Pilate Suite and Stray Hunter’s Bullet (forthcoming). His work has appeared in America, Caveat Lector, The Naugatuck River Review and The Southern Humanities Review.