Your sleek, black body
pressed on the stucco wall
in my backyard
should have frightened me,
Latrodectus—
But instead I felt like I did as a child,
crunching through the woods,
achingly aware of things greater than myself.
I made your acquaintance then, discovering that
you go days without breathing,
you bond to vertical surfaces,
heedless of gravity,
you play dead,
clever girl—
What a trick that was!
I thought I wounded you,
when I slipped the edge of a plate
under your two longest legs.
You tumbled back,
all eight limbs curling inward,
around your abdomen, and
that terrible red mark
you don’t even know you have—
or do you?
You might have been happy just where you were,
but I escorted you to my garden anyway,
set you upon the rich earth
under my yellow rose bush,
watched you unfold the long, sharp points of
each leg,
one by one,
and walk into the shadows without urgency.
Sobriety Poet 