Baffled

The house spider
was on the inside
& didn’t budge
when the phoebe flew up
& clung to the window screen,
jabbing fruitlessly
at a meal turned to metal —
or rather, subdivided
into orderly
impenetrable holes,
as in a physics
textbook account
of the structure of matter.
Chalk lines on a blackboard,
rows of blank faces
at their desks.
But it was right there —
the spider,
the phoebe,
the rattle of wings.