In this week by the lake tiny spiders have netted my skin.
At first I picked them off and settled them carefully
on some invisible current of air to ply their spindle elsewhere.
But now I let them roam at will, leaving their fine tracery
to bind my limbs and stream in the ripples of my wake;
tresses of a beached mermaid spinning beyond the tide line
and reaching along the shore.

The breeze carries these silken threads, spreads
my sfumato image across the forest;
the curve of bicep hangs loose from a young larch,
my shoulder blade caught in the crook of a pine,
and my nape swung free out over the water --
suspended now, taut, between the reeds.