Bridge Spider
Larinioides sclopetarius

Gnats bred to golden smoke, night-alchemizing, breed—
coinshine pebbling on the creek’s bed; Dawn to brush sand,
grain by mint grain, coy from the pinks of her eyefold.

A small hour enlarges itself. Truss-hung, lovely,
the geometer, weaving, has shorn my spirit
of its silver hair; for the plane of her window

in its high ecclesiastical shardwork gleams,
taken only at a perfect slant. The footbridge
groans as I shift, caught fast in these mesmeric silks—

where, frail as an eyeball, the orb weaver, feeding,
shuttles creekflies to her awful mouth. A gravestone,
far and obelisked, dread-white as the martyred saints

is stood: no figment on the landscape, no savor
of the inmost place in you, that it does not see.