Gathering In

Gathering In

 

As the nights grow ever longer,

So the gathering begins,

And the need for food grows stronger.

On the hedge, the spider spins.

From the leggy pyracanthus,

She sends out her silky threads

Onto ragged late dianthus,

Over baked perennial beds.

Desperate insects search the flower-caps,

While the sun descends to fall,

Blindly stumbling into cob-traps.

Life is over. That is all:

All excepting for the spider.

She hauls in her sticky string,

Sucking fly-juice deep inside her,

Keeping nourished through till Spring.

 

©Ruth Twyman Lockyer August 2013

ruthtwyman@hotmail.com