Good-Morning, Arachne
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Edie Spiers, Grade 12, Salesian College -
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Poetry
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2019
Excellence Award in the 'Inspired 2019' competition
The morning was serendipitous. It began in glutinous
Miasme I thought wandered only - white-hooded and sombre -
In the scapes of Bronte. Giant's threads, pearl-nets, diamond-headed-eggs
Dripping from the spider-mouths of these pale strangers.
There lay no sign of their arrival, no octagonal splinter.
Instead, the cyclopean sun seared through the stems. Shuttered
By gums, it uttered a wet whimper at the spectres:
Someone has pumped the world with butterfly-gas, it said. Summer
Rapacious, is hurtling down like Phaeton. Autumn
Is locked in its burning barrow and wick-poor Winter
Is clinging on bitterly. Her fingers have turned
Porpoise, and her one eye stale. Her blood of tallow -
That frost-tide - has slunk back ashamed, drowning
The over-eager blooms. Replete, we stuck them under a grisly dome.
Mercury-feeders, the paper flowers grow on shamelessly. O smug wurm:
Pyromaniac. The sky turns and turns, utterly confounded.