But old ladies know the wisdom
of catching flies.
She is a grandmother—
and even cataract eyes
squint into ages past
and humbly ask the spider
for future.

I don't know why she swallowed that fly.
She approached the spider
in creeping night
as he hung from his home,
meditating between the east wall and the television.
She lowered herself to knees and hands
painfully crawling, her nose jutting beyond her face,
and asked the spider to catch the fly.

She should have trusted it
to have the sense to die.
She didn't have to call the bird.

~Tiffany A. Christian

*previously published in Blue Never: Poems of the Apocalypse in February 2005.