spider in the bathtub

She hung there, below the silk
with a bundle. Later, a hunk below the faucet
remained, drained and quite empty.

My coat hangs on a hook,
husked and silver-fished
on the thrash end of a string, ragged
as ignorance and just as ill-cautioned.

Too many turns, this earth,
cloud-cocooned and sucked below
the spindled legs of our mother.

She waits there, black in the mouth
of a maelstrom, I know this, as she
knows me pinioned, foam-lipped and feral —
easily, so easily lured by her symmetry.

Image: Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash