A black spider

A black spider lives in the upper-left-hand corner of the cupboard
(I was about to spell it c-u-b-b-a-r-d—“cubbard”—
which sounds like it might be a homely sort of vegetable).

The dusty Indian meal moths flutter cryptically toward pheromones.
Their larvae eat the flour, pine nuts, rice,
dried porcini, dried shitakes,
and half a dozen kinds of beans.

The other day, I saw two swans, like feathered jumbo jets,
flying downstream above the river,
slicing across its bends.

One by one, mums
collapse like the paper parasols
that roll around exotic tropical cocktails.

Helen wonders if cowslips will survive in this zone.

Not a burl, the deformity on a paper birch’s trunk
looks like an elephant’s eye,
if the eye is gill-like, fungal,
and breathes light.

A blind man pats his German shepherd’s black brow.