SPIDERS
for Eleanor Fraites


No danger signs prepare you: They drop
like bricks frozen in mid-air in unswept arcades.
You squint for their silken skeletons
by which their lives weave and hang.

Their blueprints nail stupid flies, easily
conned into impotent wrecking balls.
Sunlight strips their musty machinery naked,
constructed sites erected and abandoned.

Leaping off a scaffolding for the next is nothing:
Nimble muscles reel in their oops.
Catch yourself caught unawares by them,
hardhats bred for a life on the run. It’s spring.