Poetry Friday: The Bat by Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon has an uncanny knack for linking the most mundane and earthly happenings to universal spiritual musings and I love her deeply for it.

Last month we had a bat in the house.

I have to confess that I did not immediately think of the Holy Spirit, as Kenyon did, unless you count, "Don't worry, girls, Dad will take care of it!" That's sort of six degrees of separation from the Holy Spirit because:

1. I prayed that Atticus would swiftly evict the bat.
2. Atticus is a father.
3. "Praying" and "father" make me think of God the Father.
4. God the Father makes me think of God the Son.
5. God the Son makes me think of the Holy Spirit.

So, really, I was only five degrees away from contemplation of the Holy Spirit, although I wasn't doing anything as lofty as musing about rationalism versus mysticism when our home was so brazenly invaded.* I was watching a rerun of The Office with Atticus. (Not the bat episode, which would have been a little too weird.)

Still, I guess this whole bat thing puts me within a few degrees of Jane Kenyon.


The Bat
by Jane Kenyon


I was reading about rationalism,
the kind of thing we do up north
in early winter, where the sun
leaves work for the day at 4:15

Maybe the world is intelligible
to the rational mind;
and maybe we light the lamps at dusk
for nothing...

Then I heard the wings overhead.

(Read the rest here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

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The round up this week is at Paper Tigers.

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* Anne-with-an-e said, "Are you going to kill it? They're protected -- isn't it illegal to kill them?"

"Breaking and entering is illegal, too," replied our hero.