In a high rise hotel in Surabaya,

a quiet week, waiting like so much of life,

my wife makes miniatures of snacks in clay for jewelry ideas

and I download Nordic Noir.

A trip to the gym to stay the decline,

then I dream, more vividly than I live,

and solve problems there I couldn’t understand awake,

and feel stupid against it all.

Can a thunder clap blow you out of the sky, fair-weather friend?

On our daughter’s phone, I see the portrait

of four handsome young men in the virility of youth

whose bloated bodies, one by one, are now delivered up,

home for the holidays.

 

Ricker Winsor

Surabaya, Indonesia  Jan. 2015

A Bat

 

In Bangladesh

He got in through the mesh.

It was a bat

A bat rolled up in a mat.

Was he dead or just in bed?

Estivating or maybe meditating,

He looked mummified.

I had to clarify.

He was quiet;

Too long on a diet.

No mosquito no fly

had passed by

while he took his rest

in that comfy nest.

I picked him up.

He felt cold.

He looked old.

I took him up on the roof

and, just for fun,

put him in the sun

to soak up the rays

of that equatorial day.

Slowly he woke.

I gave him a poke.

Crawling on little bat feet,

far up from the street

up there on the roof,

and then…….poof

He was in the air

without a care,

Flying in circles around me,

flapping his wings mightily.

I was with him entirely. 

Just a couple of feet off the ground

he flew round and round

round and round

with a flapping sound.

He got his bearing.

I was just staring.

He shot straight out.

I tried to shout,

“Hey, you were a wreck

And now you are just a speck!”

 

Ricker Winsor