webbed worlds
I.
we called the number on the instruction manual
and they think it's a spider that's been setting off our new smoke alarm
these past few nights,
sending fears into my head and blood pumping into my face
hands shaking with adrenaline
just to have it
stop.
suddenly.
always at night.
the baby didn't wake up--- thank God
(or no, that's a problem?
sounding the alarm is supposed to rouse the village)
certainly I’m not sleeping now.
this will not be a night for making toast,
my usual nocturnal calm down balm.
standing in the kitchen,
hungry but not on fire,
I think of when I've dusted a spider's work away
with a rag and sent them
scurrying. worrying no doubt.
off to their corners to destress and try again.
oh, now I see.
II.
the light came in sideways across his face this time
from the street lamp
though he would have preferred
low campfire glow
"I don't crush bugs as they race
across the wideness of the kitchen floor"
he thought aloud, long legs folded spider style
around a short camping chair,
"because I have been in expansive places on this planet,
I have been small
and did not want to be crushed"
III.
in my family, the grandparents
now passed
have become guardian angels, legends.
one of these saints was known for saving spiders
so in his memory, I do too.
these rituals are an act of remembrance
as much as an act of animal stewardship,
a small candle lit in the vast cathedral of a life once lived.
many of these rescues are not noteworthy---
messy, in fact,
the invisible silk inevitably tangling and twisting,
the dismount out the screen door hurried
and full of apologies.
one time, though, I had just driven back to Philadelphia,
to a rowhome shared with roommates,
and a white spider danced down between antique mirrors
over the filigreed radiator.
exhausted, distracted, but ever dutiful,
I grabbed a small shopping bag to catch and free this ivory gymnast.
once it was caught I peered into the bag
but the spider was gone.
in its place: a pearl earring I had lost a year ago.
Annie Powell Stone (she/her) likes sad songs and funny movies. Her poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her chapbook Hampden Wildlife: Reflections on the Nature of a Baltimore City Neighborhood was published by Bottlecap Press; she has been featured in numerous literary journals. Annie has a Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Maryland. She lives on the ancestral land of the Piscataway people with her husband and two kiddos in Baltimore City, MD. Read more: anniepowellstone.com
Amethyst Review 