As cunning as the steel-shod flea from Tula,
my wristwatch has a web drawn on its dial
- each hour is equal to one radial
while a black spider with a juddery pulse patrols
the web's circumference, always too late
to meet the shadow it hovers over
but consuming each second with a sated quiver.

Out beyond Earth's atmosphere, on Skylab,
for weeks they observed how several orb-web
spiders would cope with zero gravity.
Not well at first: their webs sheer gobbledy-gook.
They had to learn their weight meant nothing
by Bruce-like trial and error until
at last their webs were perfectly symmetrical

unlike on Earth where perfect webs would crash
without extra buttressing below.
But there, in the absence of flies, they fashioned
their nets into a heaven of pure ornament
and waited patiently for their reward.
- A flaw in the design lets the spirit escape,
as Spider woman taught the Navajo.

I never find that small trapdoor in time.
Here on my wrist the spider time draws in
the toughest substance of the natural world
and morning noon and night till zero hour
keeps casting her silk out over nothingness.
She quivers on a canny perspex disc
and flies without wings into inner space.