The Knot by Adrienne Rich
My sisters and I always picked Queen Anne’s lace and smeared the red dye in the middle all over our hands. I’m sure we didn’t think of it in this context, though!
The Knot
By Adrienne Rich
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.
