In the title poem, a spider, its web bombarded by rain, thinks fly, feast, continuity, only to find, when she scuttles out...the rain. The question a number of these poems address is: how might she, or two-legged arachnids, respond to such assaults on hope or trust. Not much help from this spider: “She knows she will leave...no message./ The young she thought to gorge/ with all this wealth/ will have to learn, in their own time,/ about the rain.” Other poems try harder. “Inflated Moon” offers a more bracing, perhaps more typical, if still compensatory reply. Threatened by this celestial monster, poised to flatten everything in its path to where he stands, the gawking witness discovers “how magnificent fear—/ if you can just get hold of it,/ if you’re blessed with a little time, a life,/ to stare at death and look away—can be.”