the heat is off the east wall
so the spider gets busy
sails and vacancies
to the measure of her prey
enacting
the perfect funnel.
how like this enterprise:
each line both making an idea
and the idea itself — an artefact
strung with dew fall and fly shells
its beauty incidental (though no less beautiful)
to the machinery in its depths.
and here we are wrapt
trying to remember the door.
Image: Scherzo di Foilia, c. 1863-66 by photographer (and entomologist!) Pierre-Louis Pierson, photograph of Countess Virginia Oldoini Verasis di Castiglione (1835–1899) c/- Wikimedia Commons. The collaboration between photographer and model which continued for forty years, shows her as an adventurous and highly creative individual.
Posted at Dverse – open link night where Sanaa is hosting.
And let yourself be seduced with Golden Brown by The Stranglers from 1981 (try to ignore the colonialist exoticism in the film clip 🙂)
Peter Frankis writes 
“an artefact … to the machinery in its depths.” Something felt but not easily articulated into words, but here they are.
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This is absolutely stunning! 💝 as ever I am in absolute awe of your use of imagery 😀
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That you can see the wonder and depths of the artefact is amazing & creative. I smiled at your ending, a doze of reality, trying to remember th door.
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Very interesting piece, Peter! Spider engineering is amazing. I loved this line…
each line both making an idea
and the idea itself
I wonder who the spider is, wrapping us up, in our cocoons!
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I’m (gratefully) caught in your poetic web here, PF. Well done.
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I love that you have written about spiders and their incredible engineering. I have a love of spiders’ webs and am fascinated by spiders. You’ve captured that fascination in the lines:
‘each line both making an idea
and the idea itself — an artefact
strung with dew fall and fly shells
its beauty incidental (though no less beautiful)
to the machinery in its depths’.
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“its beauty incidental (though no less beautiful)
to the machinery in its depths. ”
We really can be seduced by the beautiful, can’t we?
(I got this funny image in my head now of spider critics judging the webs of various spiders.) 😀
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(or spiders judging a poetry competition 😀)
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🤣
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A great write! And, I’ve got my eye on you …….
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It is easy to get stuck in any number of traps Peter. No matter how beautiful or enticing they still restrain us. Beware the bewitching web…
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Come into my parlour. 😉
Seduction need not be predatory,
But this sure sounds like it is. I remember watching garden spiders wrap their prey, and remember placing grashoppers in the web to watch the process. seduced by the beautiful web and wrapping, they arachnids appropriated our young sapien minds to its purpose. I feel complicit. I did enjoy this.
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A wonderfully woven piece, Peter. I particularly like the hall of mirrors implicit in “both making an idea and the idea itself.”
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