The Spider

Truth my hand will yield to you,

so, you said, as the owl cried overhead. 

Thread as rivers ran our feet,

it’s their own desires that you weave

their truths, embellished,

their faces that once shone in light,

now fall to dust and immortal ruin. 

Twist the thread, fair face make use

of their sharded triumph,

that crave the touch of your good hand. 

Weave their word, make it the truth;

paint a frieze against the cloth,

for only all to fear, to marvel.  

Tell me, where had that cloth now buried 

the touch of another,

who now scurries through the beds of earth?

Does her truth in all this live,

only in ashes of your own twist?

Did she not have your grace,

of a lowered head, that weaved half-truths,

into what the poets would write?

What have those hands made, I wonder;

but breaths pulled apart from us to dark

and made to linger by your divine clutch. 

They too twist their threads at days,

but your own hand mocks, how can it not?

Their woven truths are all half known,

breathing as the vines of cobwebs.