In the heart of the queen anne’s lace, a knot of blood.
For years I never saw it,
years of metallic vision,
spears glancing off a bright eyeball,
suns off a Swiss lake.
A foaming meadow; the Milky Way;
and there, all along, the tiny dark-red spider
sitting in the whiteness of the bridal web,
waiting to plunge his crimson knifepoint
into the white apparencies.
Little wonder the eye, healing, sees
for a long time through a mist of blood.