AN: This one has been giving me some trouble - trying to make a sky out of spiders is apparently not an easy thing... let me know what you think.

The Waned-moon Woman

The sky was blind
But for pin-prick eyes
Gleaming down glassily
Like black beads on velvet heads –
Indigo sea of spiders.
They caught cool flashes,
Lights shifting in other worlds,
Far from the tiny house,
Crouched alone in a field.
Narrow, naked porch
Spread out before it,
Where sat the grey woman
Whose creaking chair and
Clicking needles lulled
Along with crickets clinging,
Content, to the shushing grass.
Thin fingers entwined
To knotted knuckles
In coarse yellow yarn,
The woman gazed up with eyes
Like spots of spilled milk,
Breathing in
Breathing out
More than earthy air
As she listened to the spiders
Whose bristly legs brushed together
Where they crowded in the sky.