Counting the Cobwebs 
Kathleen Jamie
Under the gutter of our house are many cobwebs, each attached at a slightly different angle to the wall. It’s an east-facing wall, so on sunny mornings the cobwebs are alight. A whole quarter of cobwebs, like an Eastern bazaar or a medieval marketplace with all the cobblers, all the spice sellers, all the drapers together in the same alley. The biggest measured about a handspan and a half. A pianist’s handspan. I wondered if the spiders were related, a family group.
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Kathleen Jamie’s latest book of poems is The Tree House. Findings, a book of essays, was published in 2005. She lectures on creative writing at the University of St Andrews.
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