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
