Incel

There is a greater mouse-eared bat in Sussex
Who is the last of his kind.

Every winter
For sixteen years
He has returned to sleep
Alone
In a dark, damp tunnel
No longer lit by trains.

His loneliness protects him.
In 1957, a colony was found inside a Dorset mine
And woken from their sleep
And brought out from their darkness into camera light
And killed with fame.

He is visited only
By an order of experts
Who keep his secret
And watch him only when he sleeps.

How he spends his waking months
They do not know.
But they know he has never had a mate.

Is he angry?
Does he stretch his wings and rush
The cars that might have crushed
His company?
Does he beat
His leathery hands against the windshields
Demanding love?

He, perhaps, would be justified.
But no one has ever seen him
Be anything but still.

Image Manuel Werner / CC BY-SA 3.0