This time, I will begin at the ending.
That house burned in the fire
along with all of the others
in Larkin Valley.
But by then, the bats were gone.
I keep returning to this poem
that draws me to a late autumn afternoon
when my niece and I sat in lawn chairs
facing her house. Just after sunset,
a dark shape appeared
from a crack under the eves,
grew larger and left
on its jerky flight.
Then came another
dark shape
and another until
the bats had all flown out.
We pulled on our sweatshirts,
poured white wine
and waited for the stars
to begin their display.
Patricia L. Scruggs lives and writes in Southern California. In addition to her poetry collection, Forget the Moon, her work has appeared in ONTHEBUS, Spillway, RATTLE, Calyx, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, Lummox, Inlandia as well as the anthologies 13 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers, and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art educator who earned her MFA at California State University, Fullerton.
