Bats at Night by Richard Martin / Photograph by Gerd-Wolf Schaefer

Like the paper darts I folded as a boy
to fly across the living room,
minute black arrows circled
the garden pond, shooting suddenly
from bush and tree – tiny fragments
of black tissue paper swooping down
to the water, only to speed away again,
adding to the dusky spectacle
of the evening – blue-grey sky,
puffs of reddish clouds, punctuated
by the invasion of bats – mere dashes
in the shady text of night.

Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

Copyright Gerd-Wolf Schaefer