End of Summer

by Linda Aldrich

The spider outside my cabin window stares at me.
I think that’s an eye.  I can’t tell which way is up.
Another day at the arts retreat, and I have nothing
to show, but my spider is deep into her work,
a complex net woven when my back was turned,
the sun lighting filaments three feet across,
a delicate sail of threads catching the breeze,
filigree of gold, where she hangs in the middle
like a proud bobbin.

Yesterday I visited the studio of a woman who uses
white extension cords to make intricate patterns,
the plug ends bunched tightly together as though
looking into the center of a peony bloom,
or a clutch of baby robins, beaks open,
beckoning, the long cords wound round
and through a hoop in a pattern of nest-building
or the matrix of longing surrounding a heart.

I watch my vigilant spider inspect her web,
make repairs, shore it up.  She assumes fragility
in a world where threads loosen, ties break.
The woman who creates art out of things
taken for granted walks across the wide lawn
to her studio with a basket on her arm.
It’s the last month of summer.  The late
afternoon sun glows like a winter lantern.