Tag: web

No Place to Call Home

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My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
~Fady Joudah “Mimesis” from Alight

Like these lands we travel through,
I have grown weary, so rough, so dry.
I wet a finger to give suck
but it never lasts longs. When the baby
cries, the sound comes sharper. It cuts me.

Some didn’t believe the stories
of soldiers pouring south, what they did
to the women, to children.
Made the men watch then let them live.
Some didn’t believe, but my husband
did not hesitate: we cannot wait, he said.

We travel between slaughter and exile.
A foreign land, people who already hate us.
How will they ever take us in? What will we do
when they turn us back? Afraid ourselves,
we instruct the little ones to be quiet,
but an infant only understands hunger.

I lay him against me, try the finger trick;
he snuggles in and falls asleep, his lips
still moving. The moon was full
but is now empty, like me. I was a child
but now am woman, a mother. Is this all

I can give this child—a world of rage and shame,
of bloodshed and vengeance?
~Edward Dougherty from “Between Slaughter and Exile”

Over the eons of human history, very few people groups have been able to remain exactly where they first settled.

The forces that drive tribes, cultures and communities to move on or be chased out are multiple and often overlapping: natural disasters, poverty, disease, prejudice, persecution, oppression, drought, starvation, war, politics.

Some simply seek refuge in hope of a better life.

We who sit safe and snug in our homes forget there was no such comfort for many of the generations preceding us. Those displaced faced terrible risks as they sought out safety. Millions have suffered and died in the hope of securing a future for themselves and their descendants. Countries – even ours, the richest on earth – struggle to house and feed their own residents, much less able to cope with those who arrive even more destitute and desperate. Doors and borders around the world slam shut and remain closed.

No child should be caught in this ongoing cycle of grief and weeping, rage and shame, bloodshed and vengeance, slaughter and exile. We watch history repeat itself, again and again; we become history in the making.

May God work out a solution when mere people cannot.

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Don’t Worry…

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Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house casually.
~Kobayashi Issa (translation by Robert Hass)


I don’t mind sharing our house with spiders this time of year. Even so, my hospitality tends to wane if they surprise me in the night by weaving their web at face height, right where I’ll be walking to the bathroom in the dark.

They appear in the most puzzling spots. I wonder if the spiders engage in magical thinking about what insects they might catch in the bathtub or above the kitchen sink. Maybe a fruit fly (or a hundred) this time of year?

The living room, where we generally only sit when we have company, seems a rather formal spot for a spider to take up space in the upper corner, yet even there – cobwebs are hanging, abandoned and forlorn.

Good luck to you, my little arachnoid friends. Perhaps I’ll open the door to a few house flies and a moth or two and see if one might pay you a visit.

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A Silken Connection

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Someone said my name in the garden,

while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies,

grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient

under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and stranger.

When I heard my name again, it sounded far,
like the name of the child next door,
or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer,

while the quiet seemed my true name,
a near and inaudible singing
born of hidden ground.

Quiet to quiet, I called back.
And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning.
~Li-Young Lee “Out of Hiding”

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”

I seek out the hidden web artist
who rebuilds this remarkable funnel
in an open pipe attached to a gate
I open and close daily without a thought.

As I approach, I see the weaver’s legs
scurrying hurriedly down into the safety of
its chosen darkness.

This spider needs temerity, not timidity,
to find its meal.

How else might it issue a dinner invitation,
luring me down into a sticky funnel vortex,
as a cherished guest meant never to return?

If I go astray and wander into temptation,
lose my way and plunge into the hole,
a silken thread remains:
hearing Him call out
my name from the garden,
urging me to return
to Whom I belong.

Indeed my soul hangs
by this single gossamer thread~
this silken connection calls me
back home, back to eternity.

There’s more that rises in the morning
Than the sun
And more that shines in the night
Than just the moon
It’s more than just this fire here
That keeps me warm
In a shelter that is larger
Than this room

And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things

So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home

There’s more that dances on the prairies
Than the wind
More that pulses in the ocean
Than the tide
There’s a love that is fiercer
Than the love between friends
More gentle than a mother’s
When her baby’s at her side
~Rich Mullins

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Losing Foliage

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In the shallows of the river
After one o’clock in the afternoon
Ice still
An eighth of an inch thick.
Night never disappears completely
But moves among the shadows
On the bank
Like a glimpse of fur.
Meanwhile
Trees
Grass
Flies and spiderwebs
Appear alone in the flat air.
The naked aspens stand like children
Waiting to be baptized
And the goldenrod too is stripped down
To its bare stalk
In the cold
Even my thoughts
Have lost their foliage.
~Tom Hennen “At the Beginning of Winter”, from Looking Into The Weather.

My thoughts are stripped bare these days,
no flowers or flourishing foliage left behind-
just stark rows of naked branches, waiting,
orderly and plain.

It is the nature of winter
to think only of the essentials
when night is always creeping
around the edges of midday.

There is silence outside
and echoing in my head,
while waiting for something,
~anything~
remarkable to bud out
and bloom.

Holding On Together

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today
feels like a day
to unplug the dryer
and hang
laundry on the line
in the back yard
next to the busy street
where all the truckers
and farmers
and school kids
drive by

but i don’t
have a clothes line.
~LW Lindquist “today”

Through the window I see
Her, my neighbour.
She hangs his shirt.
It thunders in the breeze.
Clasped by a clothespin
Beside her pale dress.
Side by side, they move.
The clothespin is all
That holds them
together.
~Ronda Bower “The Clothespin”

Silken web undulates,
a lady’s private wash
upon the wind.
~L.L. Barkat

We do have a clothesline that I use several times a week to take advantage of sunlight, breezes, fresh air fragrance – all at no cost but the time it takes to carry laundry outside, hang it up with my ancient clothespins, and then pull it back down at the end of the day.

It is well worth the effort; I have been fortunate to always live where there is a line and clothespins.

This morning, I found someone had been very busy during the night, securing the clothespins to the line to make sure the pins could not escape. Each pin and hinge were laced to the line with silken threads clinging tightly, just in case a pin might consider escaping.

I looked for this industrious spider, as it had trekked down a long line, working its webby magic through numerous clothespins, yet it had descended and snuck away, not even waiting to see what might happen to all its work.

The old and weathered clothespins patiently wait for their next job, to pinch together what I give them to hold on to tomorrow. In the meantime, they cling to fresh life, gaily festooned with gossamer silk.

It’s Time for Swinging to be Done

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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” from Flying at Night

It is hard to just let go and let life move on, as it will do on this day’s transition to autumn, whether with us or without us.

We build our little lives so carefully; we plan and choreograph and anticipate, and all it takes is a creaky swing (or a measly little virus) to pull it to shreds.

So we rebuild, strand by strand, in the conviction that we still belong here even when everything around us is changing and will pay no attention to how we’re left hanging.

We keep trying.
We keep believing.
We keep wanting to make the world a little more beautiful.

Spun with Wonder

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

I wandered the barnyard this morning
studying the complexities of overnight web design,
marveling at one tiny creature’s creative masterpiece
of connection using the slenderest thread.

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

Dangling

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The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”

We too are flung into the unknown,
trembling tethered in the breezes,
unready to let go of what sustains us,
fated to be tossed wherever the wind blows us.

If caught up by a silken thread,
left to dangle, suspended by faith,
we await the hope of rescue,
alone and together,
another and another, still and still.

Hard at Work

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Silk-thin silver strings woven cleverly into a lair,
An intricate entwining of divinest thread…
Like strands of magic worked upon the air,
The spider spins his enchanted web –
His home so eerily, spiraling spreads.

His gossamer so rigid, yet lighter than mist,
And like an eight-legged sorcerer – a wizard blest,
His lace, like a spell, he conjures and knits;
I witnessed such wild ingenuity wrought and finessed,
Watching the spider weave a dream from his web.
~Jonathan Platt “A Spider’s Web”

Not everyone is taking a holiday today on Labor Day.
Some are busier than ever, creating a masterpiece nightly,
then waiting in hope for that labor to be rewarded.

I too spin elaborate dreams at night:
some remembered,
some bare fragments,
some shattered,
some potentially yield a meal.

We work because we are hungry.
We work because someone we love is hungry and needs feeding.

Yet the best work is the work of weaving dreams
~out of thin air and gossamer strands~
where nothing existed before,
not as a trap or lure or lair
but as a work of beauty-
a gift as welcome as a breath of fresh air.

Intended for Joy

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There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin as quoted in  John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988) by William J. Bouwsma

It is too easy to become blinded to the glory surrounding us if we perceive it to be routine and commonplace.

I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass,  given how focused I am at mowing it into conformity.

Too often I’m not up early enough to witness the pink sunrise or I’m too busy to take time to watch the sun paint the sky red as it sets or to witness our horses turning to gold in the evening glow.

I didn’t notice how the light was illuminating our walnut tree until I saw the perfect reflection of it in our koi pond — I had marveled at a reflection instead of the real thing itself.

I almost missed the miracle of a spider’s overnight work in the grass; from a distance, it looked like a dew-soaked tissue draped like a tent over the green blades. When I went to go pick it up to throw it away in the trash, I realized I was staring at a small creature’s masterpiece.

I miss opportunities to rejoice innumerable times a day.  It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and in that moment time stands still.  Life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing.   If a blade of grass, if a leaf turning color, if a chance reflection, if a delicately knit tent in the grass — if all this is made for joy, then maybe so am I.

Even colorless, plain and commonplace me, created an image-bearer and intended reflector of Light.

Maybe so am I.