We have stopped in Seattle
at a small hotel,
where I am sitting
on a patio, a
breakfast of raisin bran,
bananas, and tea
on a glass table.
Next to me a
wrought-iron fence
bordered by
cypresses,
and between two of them,
at eye level, a
web, one
of those
astonishing circles
of nature, the
symmetry of it
glinting in the
morning sun,
lines radiating
from its center
like cables cast from the eye
of God, each one
anchored
to the other by
an apparently
endless spiral,
the way our
galaxy,
one of billions,
spirals
in its place in
the universe,
the way our solar
system
whirls within it,
a dervish
spinning in
ecstatic communion
with All That
Is—but this web,
suspended between
two cypresses,
is empty, an idea
of what might be,
perhaps even a
dream—
just a web and
sunlight
and somewhere, I
suppose,
a tiny spider
waiting, poised
at the succulent
green tip
of one of the branches of one
of the cypresses,
its thin legs
caressing the
lines of its web
the way my
fingers touched
the fine, almost
invisible hairs
on your skin this
morning,
your body alive
and warm
next to mine,
both of us breathless
in that moment of
anticipation
just before the
irresistible
tug and pull sent
us spinning
across the
construction of our perfect
work of art, our
bodies shining
in the morning
light like the silk
of a web
unshredded by wind
or breath or
harsh words
or whatever might shred
the perfection of
webs.
This poem appears in House of Mirrors
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