Before and After

The night the bat flew in was the tipping point.

The tar paper stapled to the wood-framed maw of my shack

came away on a windy winter’s night in Upstate NY.

The bat, sensing no difference between the dark inside me and out,

flew in, settled upside down in its new cave.  

It was a homesteading year for me and my young son,

a way to keep him with me and our extended family,

working the land, plenty to eat, little money.

I milked cows, harvested honey from the bees, 

stayed awake all night with the birthing sows, 

watching that they didn’t roll over on their babies.

I fed the chickens, the horses, the cows, the pigs, 

jammed the pick through the ice in -40 degree winters 

to get water for the livestock,

slept in coat and hat and burned green pine

in the wood stove; burned anything I could get my hands on 

til the chimney caught fire from the creosote.

I named my shack “Sadness.”

I did nothing well enough to feel proud;

I worked hard but felt no connection to my tasks, 

no love for the animals or myself.

Everything was a burden, a weight filling my stomach,

a confirmation of  failure.

I couldn’t adjust to this life and its demands.

Every day was winter.

I want to go back to the minute 

before the bat flew into my house.

I sat in darkness with the bat.

I sat, thinking of the irony of yearning for the routine I hated - 

the milking, the mucking out, the infinity of farm life -

yearning for the familiar misery of it.

I watched my son, sleeping in his crib, 

unaware of the little drama around him.

I opened the door and shone the flashlight til I found the bat on a cross-beam.

I stood on a chair and threw a blanket over it, 

trembling that it would escape, would settle again,

too high for me to reach.

The bat fluttered as I held tight.

I walked away from the shack,

unfolded a corner of the blanket and ran back inside. 

In the morning, I climbed high on a ladder

and, with a staple gun, tacked the tar paper back to the wood frame.

I did it all in a state of numbness,

barely present, yet knowing  

somewhere in my primitive brain,

that if I kept on, 

kept on doing everything,

I would be transformed.

© Evie Safran, 2016

Photograph of a Woman with a Hay Stack
from the NARA archives
Wikimedia Commons