reserve your greatest sympathy

for the spider, she said -- his life a comma,

a space for breath

when the day wears thin; in eulogy

we will offer orange rinds, oriole

feathers

which still remember the cadence of flight.

after the scarlet song

of august, and while curling away like

a memory

left on the palm of a window ledge to fade

I cradled the afterlife, a copper coin

on the roof of my mouth--

sought sanctuary in lockets

with faces smooth as worry stones

and separated from my skeleton

waiting for silk to flower from my

footprints

like nimbus,

slips of cloud carried close.

the seasons stuck together,

wet leaves with their fingers laced;

I traced spider nerves,

spider eyelashes, spider

syndesmoses forming faults

on the earth spread open like a

birthmark,

pale and static under the skin.

after he dies, she said, we will

resolve him

into things we have forgotten--

the branches and leaves

stretching for sunlight

in our lungs. The breaking of grief

onto a shore without sound.