Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPIDERS, by COLETTE M. BURNS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPIDERS, by                    
First Line: With space their blackboard, spiders teach
Last Line: Mathematics of the universe.
Subject(s): Insects; Spiders; Bugs


With space their blackboard, spiders teach
A science. Threads are chalk and speech.
Among the morning-glory vines
They demonstrate that parallel lines
Never meet; the hypotenuse
Is Nature's whimsical excuse
For saving steps; (Ignoring the flow,
The ripples made when breezes blow
Upon the diagraming skein) --
A level surface is a plane.
They trace a rhomboid in the air,
An angle, octagon, a square;
Or make a cobweb circle; draw
In silver, a geometric law.
Man often fails in comprehending.
Spiders, thinking he's pretending,
Patiently repeat the rule
From dawn until the twilight's cool,
And even by moonlight they rehearse
Mathematics of the universe.





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