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Nocturnes: Cobwebs And Cocoons
Funny, in ways (we had not thought of, then))
the copulations of these arachnoids:
the dominant and final predators,
the weavers of tattered webs on broken granite,
and marked shards of slate, color of the sky.
Epigastric plates wheezing for air,
they mount each other in a tangle of legs,
articulating acute and obtuse angles,
travesty of tender caresses; chelicarae
dripping, pedipalps emerge from prepuces,
quivering in frenzied search of the epigyne.
Jimmied together more hideously twisted,
than either could be apart, they jack each
other, rocking together and against,
each movement beginning like a shudder,
becoming a wave of shuddring convulsions,
servile to instincts always reproductive.
Ejaculate from both, threads of white silk
glisten wetly almost to tranlucence,
to catch on the barbs of their massive carapaces.
Only afterwards, the hunters' cadences begin,
the terrible clacking of their distal claws
upon the stone slabs over which they crawl.
Octoid eyes flash in search of living nourishment;
no crevice is deep or sturdy enough to conceal.
Chased, cornered, captured, fanged and paralyzed--
almost embalmed by venom pumped throughout,
the hapless victim is enfolded, sometimes partly
crushed beneath those legs. Cocoons begin to spin.
The fertilized eggs have been cast beyond,
to harden, towards hatching, in alienating weather
Marked predator and prey, are both encased---
wholly enclosed---within great globes of silk;
the one to feed, the other devoured
slowly, until their delayed deaths are achieved.
Our ships crashlanded---beyond repair.
Distress signals fail. A distant, eerie noise,
signals distress of yet another sort,
the triumph of alien biology.
The sky maintains its dull, unchanging gray.
Another generation, dominant,
scuttles, lumbers, near now, to mate and prey.
