Winter Hours by Robert Hilles

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Winter Hours
  
Downstairs in our small guest room
A spider claims one corner
Of the ceiling
Its web but thin lines
Of grey against yellow
  
In the last picture I took of my brother
He managed only half his puckish smile
His eyes so sunken he looked starved
His hands marked up as though
He had to claw his way back to us.
His gaze was to one side
He didn't want to be seen like this.
  
There is no moment of time
That does not contain time
After the picture
My brother returned to the couch
We listened together
To Blue Rodeo's - Five days in May
Caught in the song's moment of forgetting
But all songs come to an end.
  
I get up now and leave the spider
To its work
When I return in a day or two
There will be no spider and
Only a few strands of web
Barely visible in the stirred air.