If the dew should rise in the web

This morning, I looked out at a sea of fog.

As I sat on the edge of my bed, and applied my face, I saw vague figures emerge from the mist, getting clearer and more distinct - although still shadowy - as they approached the chain-link fence that surrounds the middle school across the street.

Then, just as suddenly, they retreated in a raggedy line strung out across the school yard, running, chasing and racing like the edge of the ebbing tide. They vanished, one by one, into the off-white.

And I saw spiderwebs everywhere, edged in moisture.

There's a web-wreath in this picture!  Click to enlarge and see if you find it!

When I had dressed, and was heading down the street that faces my balcony, on the way to my morning coffee, I got a closer look at the wreaths and doilies, so retrieved my camera from my knapsack.

As I snapped, a woman called to me.

"Have you seen these?" she asked, and I joined her to gaze open-mouthed at a shrub festooned with dripping webs, rather like a Christmas tree draped with spooky lace.

"It's like an infestation," she said. "There hasn't been rain or wind to destroy them."
I pointed out that spiders are actually a pretty good weapon against far nastier infestations, and told her how all this put me in mind of my favourite play. (You can say such things to a stranger in Fernwood.)

In The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry, Jennet Jourdemayne, an accused witch facing the prospect of immolation at dawn, describes how approaching death has brought her into a sharp awareness of life and time:

I've only one small silver night to spend
So show me no luxuries.  It will be enough
If you spare me one spider, and when it spins I'll see
The six days of Creation in a web
And a fly caught on the seventh.  And if the dew
Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.