In the space between summer and fall there are a few days that travel perfectly from dawn until the sun dips behind the western trees,
and for just those few days the crispness of the air and the still strong sun balance each other out.
It will tip toward chilliness very soon, so we must take ourselves outdoors, must abandon our laundry and the dishes in the sink
and live like a child or a poet for a few days – in the kind of awe that visits responsible adults so seldomly.
I step out the kitchen door with the dog, and not even the overgrown garden can bother me today – look at the bees!
And I see a yellow garden spider has spun her perfect web in the ironweed.
I read somewhere they only live until the cold air returns, so she must feel it now, in her exoskeleton – not having bones.
She doesn’ t seem aware of anything except the most delicate perturbations in her web, meaning:
food, mate, danger – and she windmills her legs to face the direction of the movement, pauses,
then, having read the particular texture of the tugs, rushes to the place where a tiny white moth, disturbed by my stepping into the garden, has flown and been caught there.
— Michele Pollock
22 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2026