Friday Poem: "Surveying With the Jumping Spider"

A crumb of dirt, at first glance.

Dark fleck amongst white bird-speck and grill-ash.

Then a headlong twitch forward fifty bug-lengths

in half a blink,

close to my hand in its gigantic

clumsiness, all wrinkle and knuckle.

Then it is on me.

Microscopic furry glove with three extra fingers.

Eye-buttons that shine despite their tininess.

The colors: if black can be vivid, then vivid black,

and white-so-white, unstained antiblack.

I am too large for it to see me.

Existence is a tickle:

spider-feet hooking wrist-hair,

while above me, maples, cables, a distant flashing tower,

and I’ve got my arm around the iron porch-rail.

A puff of breath could change the spider’s life.

Instead I wait for it to flick back to the step.

I can see the curve of the earth no better than it can,

I depend on horizons to predict my storms.

Another second and it has spat down a safety line, jumped

into the still aura, and dangled. It hangs waiting.

I lower slow and it is gone.

I’m different now: briefly lightened by one spider’s spider-weight.

This poem appeared in Poet Lore Vol. 99 Nos. 1/2.