Caught out in the wrong shoes,
I choose to join the spiders
in a crevice in the old park wall.
To them, all weather
is the same; all time
is time to do some work.
I watch them working, watch
their old webs breathing
as I breathe, now tilting brickwards,
now tilting back, laced
with shreds of sycamore
and pigeon down. I wonder
if I stay here long enough
might they take me in –
reduce me
to a crescent of fingernail,
a snatch of hair – induct me
to their way of being there, stoically
sticking to one thing.
Then a robin
cocks his little head as if to query
why I’m crouched here like a toad
when the rain has stopped
and all these worms are ours for the taking.
