Trip
A spider's curving, shallow-funnelled hall
leads to space inside my car's wing mirror.
A gap between the glass and metal wall;
pupil in the web's inverted sclera.
Cemented bridging fibres reeled in tight,
nerved and netted radial extrusion
which dissipates in flimsy spiralled white;
tensile, sticky-droplet daubed diffusion.
Her unlit door reveals an arching limb,
poised to read the message in a tremor.
I drive. The wind speed flips from nil to grim.
Spider's lives are fraught with chance dilemma.
She nets a fly at forty miles per hour;
tearing force to leave a web in tatters.
She scrambles from the safety of her bower,
bouncing in the gale as remnants scatter.
She grapples with the mad vibrating fly.
In her cause, my speed has dropped to thirty.
My eyes point one ahead and one aside.
Now the driver on my tail is shirty.
My rearview mirror shows my unyoked eyes.
Backing off a bit, he quails and blanches.
The spider's getting stuck - I empathize;
sprawled across her web's gyrating branches.
She leaves her dinner hanging by a thread;
struggles back to base - the spent survivor.
The flummoxed man behind me shakes his head.
Who can understand a female driver?
I park. She's in her hall. Her web's diminished.
She may share my mirror, on my honour.
But if she crawls inside with me, she's finished;
done away with, whacked, squished, toast, a goner.
poem by Diane Hine
Added by Poetry Lover
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