Suspended from a wire are seven panes of the thinnest glass.
The glass is so light there seems no tension in the line:
all stress is interior alone.
Each has been etched with the cross-section of a tree,
about forty close-set rings.
The panes are immaculate. Only the etched circles are visible –
the hard surface bearing them cannot be seen.
The rings are so thin they could be thread.
Though born from acid, from force, they could be drawn by hand,
slowly, by a gifted child.
On each pane there is a golden ravelling,
gentle, a loose knot of golden braid.
Year after year the Patient will have seen this:
I have forgotten to wind that line in before!
Autumn always brings this light to her garden, and to its patient bright spiders.