Jack Scott writes

Spider

Part I

Long legged orb, 

lurking hungrily 

upon her net of latticed air, 

welded tight with crystal light, 

at first sight in levitation 

so finely spun’s her web, 

art knit from nothing 

onto nothing, 

so it seems.

Fasting, 

taut and faithful 

as the seams she spins and weaves, 

abiding in her hunger, 

she grooms her public loom, 

hidden in plain sight.

Eye music: 

dew-bellied notes upon the threads, 

held in perfect pitch, 

distillate of darkness 

clear now with dawn’s fresh light 

like tears when weeping’s done, 

back inside the air by noon.

Air 

which stirs the largest things 

when moved in all its might, 

calm, is stirred itself 

by many tiny moving things: 

an ocean swum by swimmers 

small enough to drown 

in a single drop of rain, 

plowers in this edgeless space 

whose furrows seal too quick 

to sow with anything.

Insects: 

little zippers 

closing up the air they parted, 

healing little tears in space 

on their way to anywhere. 

Birdlife of the lower air, 

a la carte potential 

groceries for a feast 

on spider’s dinner table, 

uncharted in their haste.

Air is ocean 

beyond the spider reef. 

Its currents waft the careless 

to, not through, 

the spider’s sieve. 

She stalks 

and plucks the stuck: 

stranded sailors of the sky, 

dines privately on profit, 

one eye upon the store, 

the other on her overhead. 

She grooms her face 

and gleans the crumbs 

from here and there 

upon the tightropes 

of her lair, spread upon 

the public, ordered air, 

routine of her average day, 

but all days are not the same, 

one size does not fit all.