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with sunlight, a moment of visibility

A few days ago, I walked into the kitchen slightly earlier than normal.

Suspended between two objects on the counter was an orb web highlighted by sunlight, the sunlight filtered between tree leaves and channeled by the window frame.

The spider had worked fast. At 2:00 a.m. I’d picked up the indoor-outdoor thermometer-base to check the outside temperature. At 6:30, the thermometer-base anchored one edge of a spider web.

Holes, or mis-weavings, marred the perfection and some strands along the outer edge were interrupted, or turned back on themselves.

A fruit fly hovered near the web. I rooted for the spider as changing light rendered the web invisible.

How does a tiny spider come to spin a web next to a fruit bowl?

Today, I transferred the photos onto the computer and, zoomed in, saw the web spiraled inward toward a nucleus like a minuscule fried egg which, for all I know, was some trick of light or an optical illusion magnified by the camera.

I never did see the spider and the web was ephemeral.

Fibonacci spiral in the center of a spider web

. . .

A year ago we camped in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, where the insect life was very different from in town:

Antler Campground 
by Katie Eberhart

Above, in the pines, warblers trill
and from the ground a click beetle launches
into asynchronous clacking flight. Maracas—
from lawn chairs we focus on our feet

surrounded by wildflowers where a green fly curls
on orange stamens and a delta-winged bug
(moth or fly?) settles into a white bloom.
Nearby, a dragonfly clutches
a red-skinned manzanita twig

as if a perpetuity of burnished copper, wings pounded
into a transparency of veins. Beneath the brazen sun
we strain to hear ants traipsing over talc-fine soil,
eggs in their mouths—exoticness we don’t see in town
beneath the dome of chemical comfort.

Antler Campground won Third Place in the Oregon Poetry Association, Fall 2012, Poetry Contest for Free Verse and was published in OPA’s 2012 Anthology, Verseweavers.

Poets: the mail-in deadline for the current Oregon Poetry Association poetry contest is August 31, 2013 (See the contest flyer). You don’t have to be a member or even live in Oregon to enter.

Or check the National Federation of State Poetry Societies web site to see if your state has a poetry association and contest!

Cheers, all.

Katie