Unnoticed, beside the hedge,
I watched them embrace.

She, body arching, silk snapping,
oblivious in her white-hot passion.
He, all the while,
behaving as if drunk;
snared by her feminine wiles,
paralysed by her clinging grasp,
shocked by her sudden forwardness.

I passed that way again today,
but they were gone, those lovers.

All that marked their passing
was his drained husk,
spinning madly
upon a broken,
abandoned web.