Some Aching
Denial
to mitigate the
affirmations
A discarded
fence post
sun beaten
Rejected
of earth
piss ants
Nest in
its shattered
bowels
A spider
has stitched
an erratic
Web of denial
Poems on the topic: spider
Poems on the topic “spider” on Poets.by.
Love Poem
surcease
surcease
the cloud's edge
a crack
in the sun's face
surcease
surcease
the church tower
dead east
in the mornings
brown hair tied with a black felt ribbon
a building with the windows gone
men throwing boards from a truck
as thus
from the mind's light
as I lay
She Has Work to Do
She has work to do, establishing
Her anchor threads, her frame threads,
Even her bridge thread and all her radii,
Hub to be ready by dawn, herself resting --
All-powerful, so far as any lacewing can
See. Seeking out the ripest berries, she
Works not to eat drupelets, but entirely to
Offer them as bait to fruit flies and their ilk.
Right away along comes another
Killer, a ladybird beetle, seeking the berries
Too, and for the same reason. He's caught,
Offers resistance, is overwhelmed, rolled up,
Done. Whatever comes in, if protein, her
Ovum will accept. Death it is brings life.
Cobweb
It joins a dark pine to another tree;
And shining through its bones a ray of sun
Unearthed it like some graceful skeleton,
Or an unfinished frame of faery
As frail as words. Not even thought could be
More carefully, more delicately spun —
As fine a thread as that invisible one
Of speech and silence between you and me.
The spider lurks there blotched and poisonous.
He is the monstrous god who can at will
Belch beauty from a stomachful of spit;
And dreaming of that silver binding us,
Which Love unwinds and weaves, my heart grows still
And cries that Love is lovely — isn't it ?
Sanary
Her little hot room looked over the bay
Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms,
And there she would lie in the heat of the day,
Her dark head resting upon her arms,
So quiet, so still, she did not seem
To think, to feel, or even to dream.
The shimmering, blinding web of sea
Hung from the sky, and the spider sun
With busy frightening cruelty
Crawled over the sky and spun and spun.
She could see it still when she shut her eyes,
And the little boats caught in the web like flies.
Down below at this idle hour
Nobody walked in the dusty street
A scent of dying mimosa flower
Lay on the air, but sweet--too sweet.
In the Attic
Dust hangs clogged so thick
The air has a dusty taste:
Spider threads cling to my face,
From the broad pine-beams.
There is nothing living here,
The house below might be quite empty,
No sound comes from it.
The old broken trunks and boxes,
Cracked and dusty pictures,
Legless chairs and shattered tables,
Seem to be crying
Softly in the stillness
Because no one has brushed them.
No one has any use for them, now,
Yet I often wonder
If these things are really dead:
The Wall Cabinet
Above the steep back stairs
So high that only a ladder can come to it,
There is a wall cabinet hidden away.
No one ever unlocks it;
The key is lost, the door is barred,
It is shut and still.
Some say, a previous tenant
Filled its shelves with rows of bottles,
Bottles of spirit, filled with spiders.
I do not know.
Above the sleepy still back stairs,
It watches, shut and still.
To a Magnificent Spinner, Murdered
Gnats and an ant have gnawed your nimble bones —
You who could spring and sprawl on your own thread
Down half the meadow. Under tiny stones
The ant has stored your essence. You are dead.
You stitched the air with level darts : the sun
Slid on your silvers. Now they slant oblique
Like strokes of rain. . . .
Your neighbors have begun
To chew the cud of festoons. From the cheek
Of this, your hairy enemy, dangles one
Loop of his glee to tease your skeleton.
Wasps sting the grapes still, carry spider-spoil
In twisted torment past your web and on
Where their crude honey hangs in muddy cones.
The ants are hurried. One huge bee intones.
The pond is wrinkled with a velvet oil
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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