In another complicated manoeuvre
        we watch bats feeding in the figs, fat drops of bat shit
        something to really think about as I look up &
imagine David Attenborough hanging close by, his camera
right where my head is. A bat looks straight into my eyes
        mammal to mammal

& I keep filming, sheet lightning and the odd bolt
        post-gothic behind lush fig branches, night storms
        cracking east toward Bondi and the headspace docos over that way.
All this at the bus stop on Hay street, waiting with you
for a ride home. The Year of the Monkey
        is just beginning, city a little crazy on cordite,

red lanterns & the endless bats. Overhead
        people watch ads as they glide by in a monorail,
        look out at fluorescent high-rise &
down at us and the big leather bees
or so you say they’re called, making me laugh
        with that fake English accent, my eyes’ aperture

widening to take in the distance
        between image, language and object. Which is just
        as it should be—commentary on bat-world
made up on the spot in a ‘naturalistic’ way,
all wet and exciting—then our machine home
        in the mid-summer-night air, so down-town and stuffed.