()
Echoes
It was in the passageway that tunnels through the width of the dam that I saw the bat. It was clasped to the chain-link fence, its body gathered into a tight bundle. If alive it was hiding all signs. No movement whatsoever as I edged closer. Here it is (or was), suspended in this cave that’s not quite a cave, below the water line of this lake that’s not just a lake.
I think of the improbable forces surrounding us—degrees of pressure and weight that can’t be fathomed—an enormity of concrete holding back an immensity of water. An irrational thought floats up, that the fact of the dam and the fate of the bat are somehow connected.
I return the next day to see that the bat is no longer there.