Sonnet: Janice D. Soderling, ‘September Morning’

Across a sun-lit pane, deft, unconcerned,
a spider struts the steps of an old dance,
a set design, in no part happenstance:
and I again to sun and rune returned.
Stumbling along, half blind, half deaf, half-learned,
in yet a day of quarrel and circumstance,
I turn from cluttered web to view askance
night’s daughter, she who never can be turned.

Sleek spider dame with one plan, to consume,
to suck the juice from each unwary fly,
with no grand need to query or presume
if there was meaning in your quarry’s sigh.
Here, in the corner of my fog-filled room,
Atropos grins, her scissors lifted high.

*****

Janice D. Soderling writes: “I don’t write much these days, preferring to use the shortening days to read. But I woke up this morning with the last two lines in my head, and knowing it was an ending to a sonnet, I proceeded to write the rest. Perhaps it asks too much of the reader. Perhaps it is a pretentious piece, of interest only to me. Never mind, I shall keep it, having poured three hours into it.”

Janice D. Soderling has published poems, fiction and translations in hundreds of print and online journals and anthologies over the years. Her most recent poetry collection is ‘Rooms and Closets‘ available at all online bookshops.

Photo: “Spider In Window” by trekkie313 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.