Survival.(Poem)

 
SURVIVAL 
 
   The St Andrew's Cross spider knows as much 
   about survival as the marketing 
   men who have studied traffic flows and such 
      while locating 
 
   the most likely position for a new 
   takeaway hamburger store; it has slung 
   a web which dangles, shining, between two 
      humble, unsung 
 
   shrubs directly over the entrance 
   to the hollow chosen by some queen bee 
   for her hive, set into the base of a dense 
      angophora tree 
 
   beside the lane. Plump worker bees commute 
   to petal factories, from vine and stem 
   to flower bed, on a familiar route 
      for each of them, 
 
   but daily several are suddenly seized 
   in a near-invisible spiral of silk. 
   A wavering diagonal cross is blazed 
      onto the milk- 
 
   white central point of the web, which should be 
   a warning to the victims, one might assume, 
   except that the spider is dressed like a bee 
      in a ...