He and She

She was having lunch.
He hung nearby, moved in.
Irritable, pregnant, she rushed at him,
wouldn't spare a bite, certainly not a kiss.
Woke, sensitive, he accepted his fate.
They retreated to their stations,
and nothing happened for the rest of the day.

Was this a stand-off in Schenectady?
Detente in Detroit?

Nah. Bored, needing my tropes to act,
I anthropomorphized
two brown spiders hanging between screen and glass.
It didn't help.
Nothing continues to happen this morning.

But last night surely something exciting
went on while I slept—
repairing the web,
rutting like bunnies,
birthing some babies,
sharing the guts of the fly—
when I was alive to their world.

back to issue

Jim Krosschell's poems and essays have appeared in some 70 journals, and he has published two essay collections: One Man's Maine, which won a Maine Literary Award; and Owls Head Revisited. He lives in Northport, ME and Newton, MA, and is Board President of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.