the spider long since skittered on.
He'd start
a new web, elsewhere, once the sun went down.
The glued fly kept flailing. He rubbed his eyes,
kicked himself into a tiny ball,
a trapeze artist, swung loose, fell --
snagged, on
the lowest strand. Twirled; hung, as if surprised.
Objectivity and precision keep this from being over-the-top or sentimental. It's also worth mentioning the coolness of the similes "like a cartoon character" and "as if surprised." In the way it is somehow both intimate and detached, Partridge's poem reminds me of John Clare. (The spelling of these lines from Clare's "Hedgehog" is modernized.)
The hedgehog hides beneath the rotten hedge
And makes a great round nest of grass and sedge
Or in a bush or in a hollow tree
And many often stop and say they see
Him roll and fill his prickles full of crab[s]
