In the future every city in the world
will have a brand named after it, a designer
label or a nonprofit—it’ll have a letter
changed or a space eschewed: Mona Co.,
Port-au-Prinz. Pragg, Qbec, CapeTown
(that last one writes itself, the premier
cape tailor in this hemisphere). The future
is a box of bees we shook this morning
and left for someone else to find. The past
is the single spider on the inside of my
windshield the other night, along for the ride
without much of a say in the matter. I tried
to coax it out of the car, transport it back
to the stationary outdoors, the bridge
of a receipt in my outstretched hand,
but it retreated below the dash, further
toward the engine that, in the dark,
rumbles us toward, or away from, home,
always a spindle from that locus,
a web we lay out to catch us if we stray.