While strolling late in fading light,
I showed my child a wondrous sight.
Bats were flying, here and there,
Catching insects everywhere.

My darling daughter watched with glee;
Such a marv’lous thing to see.
She asked me, in her sweetest way,
“Is there a wish on bats to say?”

“No, my dear,” I answered true,
“But I will write one just for you.”
And so I pondered this, and that.
How could I wish upon a bat?

I tried to find a perfect rhyme.
I weighed the words one at a time.
Lots of rhymes rolled through my head
Until, at last, to her I said,

“Oh, bat on high, with crooked wings,
Master of mysterious things,
In your rapid dancing flight,
Have the wish I wish tonight.”

Her secret wish, I never knew.
The tender child to woman grew.
She still loves bats and knows their ways,
Builds them homes, and sings their praise.

“A “bat romantic,” I allow,
Is what she was back then, and now
Her love of bats will never end.
She gained a cause, they gained a friend.

And oft’, she says, at eventide,
Whene’er, perchance, a bat is spied,
She thinks back to that childhood time
When I, her dad, wrote her a rhyme.

A rhyme that time cannot erase,
For in her heart, it’s found a place,
And to that flitting bat will flow
These words she learned so long ago:

“Oh, bat on high, with crooked wings,
Master of mysterious things,
In your rapid dancing flight,
Have the wish I wish tonight.”


From A Bard in Boots (January 2023).
Used here with permission.