#merie kirby

Tensile Strength

While the sun warms the world you start
to unspool. Set anchor lines from flowerpot
to wooden step, to railing, to siding with
calculation, tension, balance. Work
your way from ray to ray, don’t
worry about running out. Remember:
before you even began, you consumed
yesterday’s efforts, what worked
and what did not, and they supplement
your spinning today. You can spin
all kinds of lines – mostly nouns, but also
sticky adjectives, frizzy adverbs
that easily catch, taut verbs at junctures.
Don’t worry about falling: these words
can bear your weight, the weight
of your spirit on days when merciless
birds with hungry beaks and blithe
dogs with careless tails roam everywhere.
It’s a silk that could take you
anywhere, can float between trees,
span the distance from house to
garage, impressive and
a little frightening dew-beaded
like a mourning shawl.
But here, in the little lyric
web connecting pansies to steps,
each strand shines in sunlight.

—Merie Kirby, published in Stirring