I breathe with the spiders web.
Stretched horizontally over the pond, it pulses up and down on a breeze too slight to chase even the mosquitos away.
It stretches towards the Joe Pye weed, is pulled back by the tug of pussy willow when a bird hops from branch to branch.
I pull my hood around my face, place my hat on top of it.
Long sleeves, socks, leggings and my skirt tucked under my knees. The only skin available to the many mosquitos is on my face.
They land on my stomach, my legs, my chest, I watch them probe, trying to find blood, but the layers are too thick.
I heard that mosquitos will go away when you swat them. So I swat and watch the mosquito fly off, only to have another land on my nose.
The bird in the pussy willow flys low over the pond, not two feet above the web. Like the light of a dying star or the wake of a boat, it takes some time for the movement of the bird to reach the web.
When it does, the web sinks low enough to skim the water, then arches back up, slowing to stillness.
I become the spider, disappointed when the mosquito bounces off the web. My face becomes bait, as I squish the tiny angels between my fingers and cheek.
I breathe with the spider web.
It flows up, then down, then up again.
It’s only after sitting for almost an hour that I see the spider.
I look away for a moment at the mosquito on my leg. When I look back an insect big enough to call the spider out of her lair is stuck in the web.
The spider is long.
Long thin legs reaching out in front and behind of her long thin body.
She spends some time with the insect, doing something too far away for me to see. Then the spider, walking upside down on the bottom of the web, hops across it, breaking it as she goes, and disappears under the bowed Iris leaf where she’s been waiting all along.
