Friday 17 June 2016

Colette Bryce: A Spider



I trapped a spider in a glass,
a fine-blown wineglass.
It shut around him, silently.
He stood still, a small wheel
of intricate suspension, cap
at the hub of his eight spokes,
inked eyes on stalks; alert,
sensing a difference.
I meant to let him go
but still he taps against the glass
all Marcel Marceau
in the wall that is there but not there,
a circumstance I know.



Published 2008. The fact that the spider is given the masculine pronoun, and is seen as a well-known male human ("all Marcel Marceau"), suggests the poet is describing her own experience of finding that someone has been trapped inside her own glass wall (or unintentional web?). Or maybe she herself is trapped by a man? ...But this is getting into gossip, not poetry.

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