After You Left

The orb weaver returned.
I watched it
anchor itself on the casement
then launch itself obliquely
from the horizon of the window.
In these short days
spiders seek corners.

I had intended to tell you
to still your broom.
The dust in the parlor would have waited,
would have found room on the whatnot shelf.

What was it you wanted to say?
I shaded my eyes but couldn’t hear.
My shadow is callow;
it turns from the window’s glare.

***

For the past four years Angela Corbet has been writing with Reservoir Street Poetry Workshop, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group of poets who meet weekly under the direction of Tom Daley.  She has also studied with Sophie Wadsworth at the Concord Poetry Center, in Concord, Massachusetts.  She teaches writing and reading to Grade 8 students in a public middle school in Massachusetts.

Read also Stone Harvest.