Spider Love
Two spiders passed each other in the night
Betwixt the web he wove, and the spin she spun, neither of the twains did intertwine
His elaborately engineered framework did stretch, from poplar to sycamore
Her symmetrical, silky spiral was equally complex, from rosewood to weeping willow
Each weaved with such precision, intersecting and criss-crossing like perfect lines on a map
And even though they spread so far and wide, both seemed independently to mind the gap
Had their gossamer threads swayed in the wind, they may have met some days in between
But so strong were their weaving that both held their geometrical form like steely trampolines
Hapless prey ensnared did pull and tug when caught in his or hers clickbaity trap
But every sticky strand withstood the impact and not a single one ever did snap
Once entangled, no moth or cricket could fight or flee but eventually froze up to await fate’s delivery
Until he or she doth wriggle to writhing bug, showed it who’s daddy, and swathed it like an Egyptian
mummy
He was shy and she introverted, dining solo had always been the way to go
They both supp’d late when it was quiet, finding a particular branch bathed in the same moonlight
He may as well been from Mars and she from Venus, no Bowie around to play cupid and spread some
ziggy stardust
Some nights when it was especially still, he recalled being incy wincy, she remembered being itsy bitsy
Oh, how they loved climbing up that water spout, washed down by the rain and up again, over and over
again, never wincing once, all in good fun
But later – much later – they both realized the game was a lesson in humility, presence and persistence
Both he and she soon moved on and out, like the rest, to put their own skill sets to the test
Neither needed to know how a fisher of insects to be, it was somehow embedded in their DNA, they were
self-taught, independent and free
How to slip and stitch, knit and knot, braid and pleat this soft, slender scaffolding into a tantalizing,
topological tapestry
Some nights when the moon was full, though, he wondered whether he’d be alone all is life, or find
another to be his wife
She too, just next door, pondered whether she’d ever find a partner to love for evermore
Once, his sensory synapses sniffed a whiff of female pheromone waft by
Once, she thought she caught the riff of a male mating song nearby
Their spidey senses tingled, their tiny tubular hearts were ready to mingle
No time, no time, no time to mull over being single, they were ever too busy
answering the daily grind of the gauzy kind
Spinnerets a’spinning, there were webs needed a’weaving,
mazey nets for assembling, camouflages for deceiving
‘A queen bee has her loyal coterie’, said she
‘Ants have their armies, termites their colonies’, said he
‘All I have is me’, said both he, and she
Alone was she, lonely was he
One particular breezy day, a single thread fell loose, and flew from willow to sycamore
It landed smack in the middle of his finely wrought trap door
He sensed the intruder and raced down to paralyze and subdue
Only to realize it was a stranded thread, not one of his that he knew
He wondered who could be nearby, hopped over and spied
Spotted an eight-leggy spidey swiftly spinning, elegant in her stride
He was immediately entranced by her art, could this be love at first sight?
She sensed his vibrations and looked up into the light
For the first time, their eight eyes met and latched
But this was no simple game, set and match
“Awww, finally the MJ to my Peter Parker,” he thought
“Looks kinda scrawny, he’s no Tom Holland to my Zendaya,” she thought
“Hmmm, she looks kinda busy, I will come back tonight with some juicy grasshopper pie baked
especially for her”
“Too busy right now, I will pop over and gobble him up later”
He skipped and danced home, thinking it was the end of his torment, completely clueless that he just
ducked a black widow moment
So she turned back to weave away and he went back to his tree to bake and live out the rest of his
last day
Julian Matthews is a multi-ethnic poet published in various journals and anthologies. He crashed into a poetry workshop seven years ago. That happy accident turned into a rabid compulsion. If you wish to support his recovery, please send him Wordle answers at http://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
The Marbled Sigh 