THE SPIDER

It is loneliness that makes me Tie little bows of silk to leaf, Branch, blade and blossom. I build my web for the company, Not the blood. O I love The blood, of course: a vintage In which you taste a year Your ancestors knew. But it isn’t blood That sustains me: it is The shiver through the web Like a doorbell tripping Up the stairs of an empty manse. I hurry over as if to help them, But before they can beg me For mercy I am turning them Like a spindle on a lathe, Their cries growing Softer with each orbit, Until I can hardly Hear them hum. Then I am lonely again, A poet between poems.