"Spider/Magpies/Crows" by Sandra Kohler

Air thick, not cold, still, moist.

Gray skies. The world is not

transformed by a vow or a wish.

A spider hangs above the chair next

to me, but I can't see from where its

web depends. Shakespeare's lines

about jealousy run through my head.

All the words we've been given. Or

have taken, like magpies from this branch

or that leaf. Patchwork. Has the spider

fallen into my cup? There are voices.

When silence comes it is marked by

a bird's call. In the bed next to this porch,

there is one perfect pink rose – could

I use my bare hands, break its stem?

A rose for love. For my love. Perhaps.

A neighbor two houses away drives

the small truck out of his driveway,

someone else gets in, they drive off.

Something is finished which I didn't

know was started. On the upstairs

balcony across the street someone is

moving a tree; he seems to be staring

at me, but perhaps is not. He goes

indoors. Now there is nothing but

the sound of one bird, close. A car

delivers a package to a house one away

from the neighbor's. I can't read its

orange sign. One way and another,

the world is hard to read. My coffee's

done. There's no spider in the empty

cup. A migration of small crows

gathers the day, flees with it.

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Slant, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, and Tar River Poetry. In 2018, one of her poems was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the new Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.