silver thread

high winds momentarily shut down the ambitious spiders who
fling themselves across gaps on my deck in the night, leaving
sticky silver strings in their wake

one morning a single silver strand
drops from the poplar and swings across my line of sight.

some overnight projects are a little overly ambitious, stretching
across walkways only to end up caught in my hair with some spider frustrated
at the one that got away 

others create a tangle under a chair
no apparent pattern but a maze of ways for a fly
to get stuck

the perfectly constructed web
symetrically woven
sparkling with fresh dew in the morning, waits
for the first small creature to choose the wrong flight path.

Tyler spotted a web at the playground,
and we found the tiny tan spider sitting motionless at the anchor point
 where web touched metal
  waiting
a mosquito caught on the far side of his web
   still
we prodded the spider 
and then Tyler decided to take out the web. 

the spider instantly flew across her disintegrating trap
snagged the mosquito before it fell
 surrounded it twice with silver strands, and dropped
down on one of the remaining threads
to disappear
under a playground platform
before the destruction was complete