A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

“The Orb Weaver’s Song”

Book Excerpt: Fight or Flight

The Orb Weaver’s Song

Our orb weaver has passed on.
Come spring, countless of her children

Will hatch from the egg she’s left behind —
A planet hovering in its cradle of silk,

A womb suspended in the porchlight’s gleam.
Does she sing, I wonder, to her little ones

In her sleep? Do they sing back,
The unborn, in the midst of their dream?

“The Orb Weaver’s Song”

Copyright © 2023 by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. All rights reserved. Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, a Nashville native, is the author of Ghost Gear and Visiting Hours and editor of Apocalypse Now: Poems & Prose from the End of Days. He’s the acquisitions editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books and the founder and editor of PoemoftheWeek.com and the Floodgate Poetry Series.

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