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.