Monday, October 28, 2019

SPIDERS #6 - 9


SPIDERS #6

SPIDER DREAM

A spider’s web is hanging in our bathroom, above the sink.  The spider is black, and about two inches across.  The web contains so many eggs it’s stretching down against itself.  One of the eggs is the size of an aggie, and that’s the one that’s pulling the whole web apart.  As much as I’d like to preserve the spider, its web, and eggs, the thought of many thousands of tiny, newly hatched spiders is repulsive and frightening.

Scene change:

I’m the host at an eco-resort in the Methow valley.  (It’s Meg’s old cabin.) 

Spiders’ webs hang in mid-air.  Webs and spiders are huge.  The scene down the valley is of high-altitude desert festooned with webs with guy lines that reach into the air, and stop.  The web hanging in front of the lodge’s main deck is the same as the web that was in the bathroom of the previous scene, only much, much larger. It has just as many black eggs, and they’re huge as well.

An eco-guide arrives.  I can’t remember his name, and when I ask he won’t tell me.  We discuss the size of the web, and I decide to destroy it.  I go to the lodge’s basement (which is the basement of my childhood home) for a propane torch, and bring it upstairs.  Someone had left the valve open, and there’s no propane

Guests have started to arrive, and are chatting about the long, dry trek to get to the lodge, and the hundreds of webs they passed along the way.

I’m preoccupied with the web and eggs in front of the lodge and can’t focus on the conversations.  Someone says they have a way to burn the web without my torch.  As they begin to tell me – I wake up.

RW
Seattle
3:55 AM
09.10.2019


SPIDERS #7

ATHENA & ARACHNE

If there were ever
a bitch goddess
it was Athena

murderer of Laocoon
and his sons

Telamanious made mad

Meropus transformed
into an owl

Iodema
into stone

and more…much more.

Zeus was her father

Metis
of crafty thought
her mother

crafty, but not crafty enough

Hoping to abort any offspring
Zeus ate her for dinner.

Too late

Athena conceived
in Zeus’ splitting head

burst
in full armor
from between his eyes

ending one headache
beginning headaches eternal.

Athena ruled everything –
or just about

arts and crafts
were two

and she was possessive.


Enter Arachne
common human

she was only a shepherd’s daughter
but her loom would be womb and doom

Fabric artist

brilliant vain and vocal

drew attention
to her work

to herself

big mistake.

Gray-eyed Athena noticed

and disguised in age
challenged her
to a contest.

They wove

lost themselves
in warp and weft

Athena’s yarn
telling stories of
gods and gifts

Arachne’s of
rape pain and
god-wrought suffering

Both fabrics illuminated

Athena could see
hers was the lesser –

that could not stand

nor could the blasphemy.

She stopped the game
revealed herself

turned light to fire

destroyed the weavings

wrapped a spell of silk
around Arachne’s youth

and hung her from a branch.

Eight skinny arms stretched out
silk fell away
revealing

hourglass body

swaying

by a thread.

Stay

Athena said

air is your loom

Weave

Athena said

works to be ruined
by rain and wind

art to be scattered by brooms.

and Athena
was gone

leaving Arachne
brood mare to spiders
and technicians

centered

in
her

world
wide
web.


RW
Seattle
09.13.2019

(palindrome week)


SPIDERS #8

NO VISIBLE MEANS

Spiders

like vagrants

no visible means

suspended

in
thin

air.

Seattle/Undated


SPIDERS #9

The center

where I rest
and wait

Visible Invisible

Riding wind

riding
rain

the
ecstatic
empress
scattered
jewels

that are not mine

the wasp is mine

nourishment

for
the
deep
sleep

the
long
wait

and
my
thousand
children

born

at
the
end

of
time.

RW
Seattle/Guanajuato
October 2019