The
old white spider
crawls
through my hair as I sleep
and
when I walk he waits to survey my work.
I
twiddle a dial, I adjust a belt, or a cork,
and
crouch again to my glassbeadgame, or I weep,
and he waits like a glittering hawk.
The
old white spider
has
devised an astute coalition
with
the letter, the syllable, the word, and the endless line.
I
shake out the pages to ascertain his position
but
the web on the wall isn't his, it is mine,
and he waits like a statistician.
The
spiderweb mesh
is
a mirror with roads and canals,
like
a focusing lens I go in and I go beyond it;
time
disappears, the illusion of movement dispels
to
uncover the key to the gate that can never be opened,
and
he waits like a film and learns.
The
old white spider
ensnares
me again and again
and
the only escape is the spiderweb notchings of time,
and
the stepped horizon the one possible climb,
and
the sole consolation: my city of runes, the zen
of a master entangled in slime
who
waits like a fly for the end.
The
rhyme scheme of this poem is obvious; the syllables that end of line of verses
one, two and four follow the form abbab after the repeated introductory line.
In verse three the abbab form is replaced by the ababa palindrome form. This
rhyme scheme is less obvious than in verses one, two and four.
After
the introductory line the final phonemes of verses one, two and four are
similar; verse one uses a plosive and verses two & four use a nasal. The
internal use of alliteration, assonance and consonance also shift throughout
the poem, this can best be experienced by reading the poem aloud and noticing
the motion in the aural tract when producing the sounds.