This great degraded tree is a rococo
candelabra for the bats, and they’re
a battery of black flames reversed
in raucous morning prayer
through vortex air on Bellingen Island.

The colony’s restive, chittery, scratching,
variously active as an orchestra but tuning down
until in the fetid high heavens of midday
heat a slow sepulchral swing is underway,
the whole dreaming host of them hanging as sacral
leathery scrota of disembodied saints,
the place a relict reliquary, a marvel
for us pilgrims passing with bread and milk and papers.