for emily, cause she deserves it

Evening garb described in
waxy fibrous strands,
wending around gum trees
old as the earth they grip,
reach these tresses,
sliding through the brains of Other,
the silk of Arachnae,
the yarns of Scheherezade,
whispering whump of treadle
sitting in winter tide pools,
shuddering slowed blood of
creatures drifting around the feet
planted in shifting briny mud,
and above us all filling clouds
with sugar fly the lint in
tarry little beads,
seeding our sky with viscid drops,
smacks of guilt and reparation,
the ability to forgive the spider,
and carry on in the most frigid stop-action,
still striving to remember how to
operate the joints and buttons of
such foreign machinery.