Spider (3)

I am ready for the summer to be over.

There’s a spider’s web above the spigot underneath the house
that membranes between the canopy and understory. She
sits in court in the center of the web, a jewel in a crown, a
goblet on a table, ready to be filled. I can’t help her,
I can only duck beneath to reach the spigot, turn it on, fill
the hose to water my tomatoes withering in their pots, dry
as lamp-posts, aching to be filled. I am ready for
the summer to be over, each of them says in their vines, I can
hear them.
            The spigot’s hard to turn, my hand’s become detached
from my wrist, it writhes, I can’t control it. My revolting
hand fingers its way along the ground to the gutter, climbs inside
it to the eave, and jumps down to the spider. They converse.
I’m motionless, transfixed by the strange sight.
They look at me, expecting something. I hold out my wrist,
the spider hops on, she becomes my hand, her legs my fingers,
her spinnerettes between index and middle. My exiled hand
becomes the spider now, waiting in her lair for fly, small bird,
or weightless ant to happen by and be consumed.
                                                I feel ready
for the summer to be over, for my hand to come down, to reattach
itself, although I can’t be sure I’ll be ready when it’s back.