Spinning Pins

The painter, nursing a blockage of imagery, is passing between the springhouse and his room, and notices--on the bottom rail of a board fence--a suspended skink. It's a four-inch-long lizard caught, by its tail, in a dense hanging cobweb.

It isn't moving; the web is tightened like a sleeve around the narrow point of its tail, its legs are relaxed and its eyes are open. It's inches away from the ground, the fence, or any other solid thing. It and the web are a tiny construction which turns freely like a breeze-blown pendulum.

From its tail to its head, the five lines on its black back turn electric periwinkle blue to the yellow of a daffodil, an even and surprising spectrum. A pulse beats on both sides of its neck.

The painter touches the web and the skink leaps into a small fury of motion, further trapping itself, but he frees it and watches it zip under a brick, where it freezes.

He continues on toward his room, cold spring water in his hair, his brush full of red.