Category: spider

Heart Strung on Tethers

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webyard3

 

A weaver, this spider, she plays her eight thin
black legs and their needle-nail toes across
the threads faster, more precisely, than a harpist
at concert can pluck the strings in pizzicato.

Although blind at night, she nevertheless
fastens a thread to a branch of chokecherry
on one side of the path, links it to a limb
of shining sumac opposite, latches the scaffold
to ground stone and brace of rooted grasses.
And the structure takes dimension.

Skittering upside down across and around,
she hooks the hooks, knots the widening
spirals, the tightened radii, orbs and hubs,
bridges and bridgeheads. We can never hear
the music she makes as she plucks her silk
strings with all the toes and spurs and tarsal
tufts of her eight legs at once. She performs
the reading of her soul.

She expands the sky, her completed grid
a gamble, a ploy played on the night. The silk
is still, translucent and aerial, hanging in a glint
of half-moon. The work is her heart strung
on its tethers, ravenous, abiding.
~Pattiann Rogers from  “Hail, Spirit”

 

silentweb

 

I too often feel stretched between several points as well.

I attach to important touch points and I weave between them, sometimes not sure where I’ll land or what I’ll connect with or what I’ll leave behind.

Sometimes what I create is beautifully delicate and functional.
Sometimes it is blurry and out of focus.
The center doesn’t always hold.  The tethers loosen.  The periphery frays.

But it was once something.  That’s all that matters.

 

 

webyard2

 

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Whirling in Circles

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yinandyang

 

kittensjuly27172

 

waspnest11

 

Now all the doors and windows
are open, and we move so easily
through the rooms. Cats roll
on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp
climbs the pane, pausing
to rub a leg over her head.

All around physical life reconvenes.
The molecules of our bodies must love
to exist: they whirl in circles
and seem to begrudge us nothing.
Heat, Horatio, heat makes them
put this antic disposition on!

This year’s brown spider
sways over the door as I come
and go. A single poppy shouts
from the far field, and the crow,
beyond alarm, goes right on
pulling up the corn.
~Jane Kenyon, “Philosophy in Warm Weather” from Otherwise

 

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spiderdrizzle

 

Whether weather is very or very cold, so go our molecules — indeed our very atoms are constantly awhirl to keep us upright whenever we sweat or shiver.

This summer my doors and windows have been flung wide open; I’m seeing and hearing and feeling all that I can absorb, never to forget the gift of being human witness to it all.

Like a dog trying to catch its tail, I’m whirling in circles, trying to grab what will always elude me.

 

frillypoppy

 

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homermaple

 

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It Sings in Me

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The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
–  Sara Teasdale, “April”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frogs plutter and squdge-and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people? 
~Carl Sandburg from “Just Before April Came”

 

 

 

And so spring asks:

Who are these people?

Here we are, closing in on mid-April and it has been a week of heavily drifting snowstorms in the Great Lakes and northeast, tornado weather in the south, and blustering wind and rain in the northwest.  I am not so sure of Spring nor is anyone else.

Yet it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

The calendar does not lie, nor does my nose.  The pollen counts are rising despite the rains and as I step outside in early dawn, I can catch the slightest fragrance of just-opening cherry and apple blossoms in the orchard.  Within a week there will be sweet perfume in the air everywhere and the fruit trees become clothed in white puffy clouds of blossom before bursting full into green.

In defiance of the calendar, our oak trees cling stubbornly to their brown bedraggled fall leaves as if ashamed to ever appear naked, even for a week.  In May they will go straight from brown to green without a moment of bare knobby branches.

Even so, it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

A morning bird symphony tunes up ever earlier including the “scree” and chatter from bald eagles high up in the fir trees surrounding our house.  Nesting has begun despite the wet and cold and wind because their nest is the secure home that calls them back, again and again, year after year.

Like them, it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

I rise opening like a bud, I dress my nakedness to cover up my knobbiness, I wander about outside exulting in the free concert, I manage to do chores despite the distractions — this routine of mine which is so unchanging through the calendar days becomes glorious gift and privilege.

Hopefulness sings in me in Spring.  Yes it sings.

 

 

 

Thunder Made of Whispers

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webs7

 

webdesign2

 

A poem is a spider web
Spun with words of wonder,
Woven lace held in place
By whispers made of thunder.
~Charles Ghigna

 

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webdesign10

 

I wander the barnyard
studying the complexities of web design,
marveling at a tiny creature’s creation
of connection by the slenderest thread.

Through words and pictures I whisper
from my own corner of the web
and wait patiently for the shimmer of connection:
my rumbling thunder has been heard.

 

webdesign7

 

webdew2

Mere Mist

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webs7

 

morningweb9

 

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14

 

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…Noticing
a spider’s web under the olive trees
splendidly hung with early drops, already
vanishing up the vortex of the air
…a heaven-sent refreshment? or a curtain
cutting out the light?
And I must ask it now
(small moisture that I am) under the sun of God’s great grace on me:
Which am I–dew, or fog?
~Luci Shaw from “…for you are a mist“

 

autumnmorning92416

 

To be mere mist that clarifies
rather than opacifies,
that reflects new worlds
rather than absorbs,
that replenishes grace
rather than depletes~

at once evaporating heaven-ward within His warmth
while glistening from His descended touch.

 

fogdrops3

Radical Amazement

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foggydrops10

An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of “isness.”
It is remarkable that the world is,
that we are here,
that we can experience it.
The world is not ordinary.
Indeed, what is remarkable is that
it could ever look ordinary to us.
An open heart knows “radical amazement.”
An open heart and gratitude go together.
We can feel this in our bodies.
In the moments in my life
when I have been most grateful,
I have felt a swelling,
almost a bursting in my chest.
~Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity

foggyfrontyard

fogdrops6

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
~Clyde Kilby in “Amazed in the Ordinary”

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geese913

Most of the time I’m sleep walking through each day, oblivious, as if in dense fog with unseeing wide-open eyes.  There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next.

Am I continually asleep or shall I wake to the radical amazement of each moment?

To be amazed, everything becomes more vivid, as in a dream — the sounds of geese flying overhead, the smell of the farm, the layers of a foggy landscape, the taste of an autumn apple right from the tree, the string of fog-drop pearls on a spider web, the intensity of every breath, the reason for being.

I stumble through life asleep, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.

So wake me to dream some more.    I want to chew on it again and again, savoring.

appledew2

A Silken Ladder

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morningweb2

morningweb7

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
~E.B. White “Natural History”

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wetweb2

No matter where I go to complete farm chores this time of year, I’m getting a face full of spider web and often a spider or two or three in my hair.  The spinners are very busy in the night dropping from rafters and branches, leaping courageously into uncharted territory with only their thread as rescue cable.

I am not so brave as they, nor as diligent.  Instead, I’m lollygagging in the art gallery of their fine work,  simply appreciating the abundant crop of silken ladders and hammocks, while trying not to destroy them.

I’m drawn back morning after morning to see what they’ve caught and how well they endure.  As long as I keep my face out of their masterpiece, all is well.

All is well.

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webdrizzle2

A Fling of Slim Thread

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dandyweb

Perhaps imagination’s only a fling
of slim thread, so that Mind can walk
its own tightrope, also the heart—
in Chinese the word for mind
and the word for heart is the same.
~Margaret Gibson from “Middle Distance, Morning”

webleash

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
~Walt Whitman from “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

whitehearts

sunset51116

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
~E.B. White “Natural History”

cottonwood

Attached in ways I can not always see
but surely feel,
I still tend to go astray,
wander afar,
lose my way,
yet the thread remains
to return me
to where I belong.
A silken umbilical cord
continues to pump
what I need to stay alive,
anchoring me,
releasing me without letting go.
My soul hangs
by this gossamer thread~
this silken connection
to eternity.
~EPG
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dandy430165

A Domestication of Daisies

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daisybuds

spiderdrizzle

Time is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room-a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.
~Eavan Boland from “Nocturne”

As each day blurs so quickly into the next,
I try to lock it up, throw away the key,
preserve them on a shelf like so many jars of fruit
to sample when I’m starving to remember.

Each night suspends
as I turn out the light,
a moment of sighs and murmurs
in gratitude for another day
brief as a daisy
that fades away.

daisybud

daisysun

photo by Josh Scholten

The Brows of Morning

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sunrise95155

 

begoniabud

begonia9152

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
~William Blake from “To Autumn”

 

For northwest native webfoots like myself, this has been an atypically tough summer: no rain, full-out heat and humidity, melting glaciers, dust, drought, fires, smoke and water restrictions.  When the string of three plus months of overwhelming sun finally broke in a devastating wind and rainstorm this past weekend, I for one celebrated, despite no power and no water for a couple of days.  Since then the rain has poured and snow has fallen on bare rock in the mountains.  This morning the fog returned with moisture rising from spider-webbed soppy ground to meet the roselight of the dawn.

Praise God this Morning for a blissful relief
found in furrowed brows of Morning,
of foggy feather’d clouds;
we move from clust’ring Summer
to the golden load of jolly Autumn.

hydrangearain915

webleash

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