after words

Last week they quivered their webs
in the doorframes the way September
aspens shiver Wyoming’s western hills,

thin legs, the color of charcoal against
their birch white homes, quaking
with the proximity of broom and bleach

solutions.  Now, you find a tattered net,
pale as ice, held by a single thread, bereft
as one leg of a simile.  Or winter twig.

[After Ted Kooser's "Grasshoppers" from Delights & Shadows]