The Spider

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

With six small diamonds for his eyes

He walks upon the Summer skies,

Drawing from his silken blouse

The lacework of his dwelling house.

He lays his staircase as he goes

Under his eight thoughtful toes

And grows with the concentric flower

Of his shadowless, thin bower.

His back legs are a pair of hands,

They can spindle out the strands

Of a thread that is so small

It stops the sunlight not at all.

He spins himself to threads of dew

Which will harden soon into

Lines that cut like slender knives

Across the insects’ airy lives.

He makes no motion but is right,

He spreads out his appetite

Into a network, twist on twist,

This little ancient scientist.

He does not know he is unkind,

He has a jewel for a mind

And logic deadly as dry bone,

This small son of Euclid’s own.