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Quiet Night
Robert WrigleyThe bat's opened thorax blips
—that's its heart
beating, says the child—and its mouth bites at
the air, and the cat
that brought it down sits two steps below
and preens, while the pale cone
shed by the porch light makes and remakes itself
with the shadows of miller, moth, and midge.
Listen, the darkness just under the stars
is threaded with passings:
nighthawks and goatsuckers, the sleepy respirations of the forest,
and the owl that asks first for a name,
then leaves its spar
and spreads a silence
so vast and immobile
you can hear whole migrations inside it,
the swoons, the plummets, the bland ascensions
of souls.
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