Somehow they just seem to appear,
in the mornings,
draped over all the senses,
clouding perceptions,
wearing on joints and synapses.

They hang across our lives
in intricate networks
as complicated and intertwined
as vineyards in the Autumn.

As if made of steel,
they are binding,
constricting
and crushing inward
like wet leather
shrinking in the sun.

Like falling snow,
dust is settling on them,
each strand encrusted
as if under layers of sleet,
frozen like the caked rigging
of an ancient ship in a bottle.

And looking out, from within,
from on its dust drifted deck
with the ship’s wheel
motionless in my hands,
I can barely see you.
Yet you must be out there,
towering somewhere above,
between the cobwebs and the fading light.

1/20/96