It’s the bait of broken things —
burrowing into a borrowed place
that you need never give back —
it’s the spastic snap of little hands
that aren’t hands, forming a nest
of webs in the cushions of dry rot and dust —
it’s the knack of losing things with grace,
parachute spiders spinning down their strands
in front of your face like a kind of rain,
the things you pass and that pass you by,
all these days, all the time.
June 2006