A little skeletal spider named Jim
let himself down till he hung still by him,
him on the John:
"Are you here at the end of your tether
so under the weather,
so right at the end of your Atropos thread?
Are you dead, my old Fred?"
said the Josh on the John.
"Art lost and gone?
You skeletal old ceiling-friend,
reached the ignoble and ultimate end?
A mere chitinous shell, an ex-spider, no less?"
and he touched him, to confirm the guess.
Not a movement from that
too-many-fingered clenched claw -
though he brushed him again, gentle as that -
old Josh saw;
but the way the string
bounced a bit
the physics didn't quite fit
so Josh blew. The thread swung
and up it now jerked that gangly thing:
"No, I'm Jim," quirked the spid.
"I just came for a look, unclung
from my lonely old cornice,
just a whim, on the fly.
Fly-fishers lose patience, and how.
It's not easy; you try.
Who else would you get to do this?
But blow me, if you blow me, I'll blow. I'll be rid
of your blowing sure's a pound is a quid.
I've the rights of a spider
to sit down beside yer.
Just came for a look.
Don't you write me down now
in your little poem book."
