Moon Mamas of the Silk River Nostoi

Reverend Crisp, magnifying glass in hand, stands on Diglis Bridge. A veteran of the Lost Order of our Fathers he bows, signals, blesses the evening walkers - members of his imaginary flock.

“Seek and I will bury you; Love and I will couple your hearts; Create and I will minister to your day’s end.”

He swivels in favour of the small eyes of silk spun onto the bridge’s wrought iron girders, manufactured like prayer wheels above the fragrant river’s dream.

His good eye swells in the glass. He asks: Are all of His creatures fashioned in His image ?

A web intricate as scripture summons him - deadly too (like scripture) for juicy aphids ensnared in these silvery chateaus. Like tiny blowfish their mouths send sticky signals to Moon Mama’s secret bedchamber, hidden between the bridge’s cross-rail and girth.

The aphids bounce and wriggle (unlike Crisp’s Sunday celebrants) rapturous, perhaps, for their invisible maker or else simply eager for their hickory bones to be crushed in a late summer show of repentance.

Crisp kneels, whispers to the spider-goddess. ‘Reveal yourself’ he says, and the silk rustles quicker than his good eye can see.

A Moon Mama darts, spins her catch into a ball. Sleek, well-proportioned, her rump secretes its wisdom from the median spinner. Her beauty is a joy to behold: her elegance, the deep black of her abdomen, her back patterned with a hoplite shield, her silk stronger than any human twine, binding like communion, the small slits of tarsi attuned to the water’s pheromones – a balmy summer’s Greek-river banquet.

Crisp sighs in wonder. A blink, a breath - she is gone, the aphid barrel left hanging like a green coronet set on a pagan throne.

He whispers a prayer of forgiveness, signs a holy cross, walks on…