When the light finally reaches them, they blink and think themselves saved.

In the pale cones of torchlight, the threads of immense and intricate webs glisten and recede into unfathomable shadows.

They are dreaming and their rescuers are only figments of their dreams.

Water from the surface drips and creeps down, bringing some infinitesimal tincture of moonlight, a breeze moving languidly over long grasses, the smell of heat and rust on abandoned wagons, the lines curving away into the green and unprofitable centre.

Parts of the ether collapse and then the molecules settle, the snow settles, the earth settles.

They keep journals and diaries, and their days enclose them, they wait for news, sometimes only for a sound – the slightest sound.

Because of the splinter of infinity in each word, they do not come to the end of their entries but float onwards, finding themselves day-dreaming over the page or lost for hours in the mystery of an attachment.

The ink calls down the sky and the spiders shrink for a few moments and then go on spinning.

 

from the series Silver of the mine of gold (open-ended: 2013–present)
(this poem, January 2013)