Adrienne Rich — The Knot

In the heart of the queen anne’s lace, a knot of blood. For years I never saw it, years of metallic vision, spears glancing off a bright eyeball, suns off a Swiss lake. A foaming meadow; the Milky Way; and there, all along, the tiny dark-red spider sitting in the whiteness of the bridal web, waiting to plunge his crimson knifepoint into the white apparencies. Little wonder the eye, healing, sees for a long time through a mist of blood.