a young girl, limping edit #1

[Brownlie]

a young girl limps
 

along the city street towards me
all legs and wobbly ankles, like a foal
new-born; -- There is a sort of linguistic inversion here, and I think a foal already implies that the animal is young.
her sandals, with their inches-think soles  -- Did you mean thick?
of clunky wood
almost hobble her, so her steps are tiny
and she teeters at the start of each one,
testing the surface
 
three men working in a hole in the road
all look up at once, all gazes locked
on her, their web of wires ignored
 
her walk mimics
a wounded animal, has alerted
some cortical reflex in the predator brain
 
all around me, men turn to stare
 
and they’re all spiders, tensed
to watch the butterfly with damp wings
struggle against the surface
 

I'm not sure about the contrasting images of butterflies and spiders. If she's newborn, wouldn't she be a caterpillar? However, butterfly vs. spider seems to paint ogres or Saracens against the holy damsel or Unas. If this is a real scene though, I think it's quite a thing to have witnessed and should be described.