Sunday Poetry: The Attic of an Aging House

Welcome to Sunday Poetry. If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday poetry blogs here.

Todays Poem, The Bat by Theodore Roethke is particularly appropriate right now as we store everything in our summer cottage (see the previous blog) for renovations. Bats are sacred here at Chautauqua because after a colony was imported in the 1940s, mosquitoes virtually disappeared.  We can sit on our porches at night and enjoy the cool breezes without bites, an absolute joy. As houses are renovated here, though, places for bats to live disappear.  While we don’t actually know we have them in our attic, we do see them flying around our house at night. Perhaps they’re upstairs duking it out with our squirrels?  We don’t know. But when the renovations begin soon, what will happen to them?

We’re considering possibilities. Bat houses. Leaving a portion of the roof peak for them and walling in the rest of it. Research in progress. We just know we want to protect our little mosquito eating buddies, who have enough problems surviving in this tough world.

Meantime, though, The Bat also reminds me of Halloween. Do you have a bat story to share with us? Remember if you comment, you’ll be entered in the giveaway for an autographed copy of Billy Collins’s Horoscopes for the Dead. See the details here.

Remember, we read poetry together here for the pure pleasure of the experience. There are no quizzes, no right ways to read or contemplate the poem we share. Absolutely no dissecting allowed. Just come along for the “read.” What line, word or thought will you carry with you this week? If you’d like to tell us where the poem took you? We’ll listen.

3 Comments

  1. Josie cook on September 25, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    I think the poem is playful and it makes me feel better about bats!
    However, they always remind me of Halloween and ghosts!
    Your post also made me feel better about them–but I will still avoid them.

  2. Josie Cook on September 25, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    I think the poem is playful and it makes me feel better about bats!
    However, they always remind me of Halloween and ghosts…
    Your post also made me feel better about them–but I will still avoid them.

  3. Debbie Haupt on September 26, 2012 at 11:06 am

    Hi Emilie, what a bittersweet time for you. But the name of your community just rang a bell, we have a Chautauqua community in Southern Illinois right across the Missouri border, it was started as a tent summer resort and is now a gated private summer community.
    here’s a link about it
    http://www.thewesternchautauqua.com/
    and it has it’s own Wikepedia page too
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua,_Illinois

    Good Luck, wherever you light the community will be better for it. 🙂
    deb

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