walking the dunes on the last spit of land
west of the Straits where Lakes Huron and Michigan 
meet and mingle
giving the lie to the received truth they’re 
two Great Lakes rather than just one big one

specs of spiders everywhere and always 
making their traps
more than I recall ever having seen  
in all the summers of coming here to
absolve my sins of life in the city

webs in low twigs webs in a reed’s curve bend
webs on the ground webs high in cedar bows 
and so I walk
along the foam whisp washed shore marveling
how Nature as with one mind is aligned

this morning’s effusion of minuscule
predators working on the oldest loom
made me stop and 
wonder at the careful crafting of these
tacit symbolists of knowing intent 

stalking the pine barrens later at dusk
patrolling the beachfront amazed
that it was today the midge flies were born
uncountable
they push out with clear wings and take to flight
 
this day’s span their life cycle in full complete 
I bear witness
And see now my morning spiders’ cunning
their natural prescience is all part  
of this seasonal spree of life and death

---

William Engel teaches English at Sewanee, The University of the South. He is the author of six books on literary history and early modern mnemonic culture, with a critical anthology forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, The Death Arts in Renaissance England. His non-academic, creative works have appeared in the past in The Vanderbilt Review and on the Knight-Ridder wire-service.

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header: Max Bender via Unsplash