RUST

Rust

We rebuilt the steps to the tool shed

in a warm October when the spiders

were bad, but between hewing

chunks of Ash and felling fresh logs,

we forgot to look into that kind of thing.

Eighty-eight legs scattered from a hidden epicenter: black, spindle jointed.

Pricking and tickling sun-lit skin and hands, each moment stretched as if

the hourglasses on their bellies slowed time while sticky feet ascended me.

The reddening tub’s remaining club foot had long since been buried, maybe weighted

by the rainwater standing tricep-deep in it that day.
The murky stuff that saved me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spike used to frolic, kicking up dust on the hill behind Grandma’s house and in front of his own,

braying at squirrels and their cousins, playing with me and mine,

tethered to a stake by a chain long enough for him to stretch himself, enjoy a modest freedom.

The fire ants erected monuments in the front yard and side. These Spiked menaced

when walked past them, gnashing teeth and destroying an edifice before a tactical retreat.

In a July we awoke to uncover their plot. Fresh mounds arose far from their origins.

Subterranean corridors mapped pizzicato revenge.

Spike ran in circles from invaders granted access from that rusty chain via grounded stake,

ran that chain into something Gordian that tightened around a tree and his neck—

the stout oak yielded a firmness his flesh could not match.

So we found him
 Strangled, stung, choking. Stuck.