Hallucinations
Cobwebs like fine electric cables, strung
from tree to tree—
how often have hair and lips and hands
become entangled
in these filaments, adhesive and invisible,
as one struggled
through the garden gate? Yet aglow with dew,
they might be
jewel-bright artifacts of a distant
civilization,
or else the street plan of its capital.
The webs work
like fish nets, harvesting insect protein
in the dark,
yet when they have been destroyed
by some conflagration
or mishap their architects rebuild
with delicate
limbs that re-shape the complex designs
reminding us
of curtains, drapes and tapestries
in the dust
of the shed, or wedding veils
and intricate
visions in the corners of verandahs,
visions
like the hallucinations experienced
from the bed
of a nursing home by a century-old
woman who
tells her carers of a fire burning in her room,
adding, “You
must see the flames. I’ve called
the fire brigade,”
before going on to wonder why
the smoke
seems “strange and fine, like spider webs,
or airmen’s overcoats.”
Jamie Grant