A poem is a spider web
Spun with words of wonder,
Woven lace held in place
By whispers made of thunder.
~Charles Ghigna
As I wander my yard
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,
waiting patiently for the shimmer of connection:
my rumbling thunder has been seen.
~EPG
The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it’s time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creaking and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.
~Ted Kooser “Porch Swing in September”
In autumn everything
everywhere on the farm
is interconnected with silken threads,
no longer invisible but
glistening with foggy drizzle.
I too want
what glistening words
or pictures
I throw out
to catch somewhere,
to someone~
another soul
connected to
mine.
God’s first language is Silence.
Everything else is a translation.
~Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk
…humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…Just as John Donne believed that any man’s death, when we are confronted by it, reminds us of our common destiny as human beings: to be born, to live, to struggle a while, and finally to die. We are all of us in it together…As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.
~Frederick Buechner
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.Â
Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
How might I appreciate something
that is such a constant,
like my next heart beat or
breathing my next breath,
so unquestioningly predictable
it never registers
in my consciousness
until the moment
it might be rent asunder,
as delicate as a shattered web
hanging heavy with morning frost?
In knowing it will be someday lost,
my lungs emptied and heart stilled,
comes the realization:
the air I rely on
for my very existence
is the most precious gift of all.
For that ephemeral knowledge
of my fragility on this earth,
in learning that I love
my utter dependency on my Maker
who gifts me my next breath,
or not,
I am truly and forever
thankful.
Like delicate lace,
So the threads intertwine,
Oh, gossamer web
Of wond’rous design!
Such beauty and grace
Wild nature produces…
Ughh, look at the spider
Suck out that bug’s juices!
~Bill Watterston from Calvin and Hobbes
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”
No matter where I go to complete farm chores, 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 industrious. Instead, I’m lollygagging in the art gallery of their fine work, appreciating the abundant crop of silken ladders and hammocks, and harvesting what I can on this page.
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.
A changeless changing, transforming into
An ethereal storming, freshening, continuous…
~Jean Garrigue “The Flux of Autumn”
If you were aware of how precious today is,
you could hardly live through it.
Unless you are aware of how precious it is,
you can hardly be said to be living at all.
~Frederick Buechner
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
…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“
To be mist that clarifies
rather than opacifies,
that reflects
rather than absorbs,
that replenishes
rather than depletes~
to evaporate within His warmth,
glistening with descended grace.
Barnstorming 