"I wish I'd said we sleep all winter."
-The Bat-Poet, by Randall Jarrell
In togetherness, there is forgetting,
The tender all-in-the-same-bed from childhood
As lost as this morning's poem
So many humans fear memory's fade
And resist being close to other people
To maintain their mind palaces
For bats and chipmunks,
They would do well to remember to heed owls
In a group or alone
And regardless of species
Poetry might be the act of an individual
But language is a we act
A tree in the forest falls for a sound
A final verse for its fellows
Making a home for its distant relations
Family doesn't make literature
But beautiful words can't become
Without the colony's warmth
Roman Ryan 