Recently, I've noticed a number of spider tents strewn across my lawn in the early morning.  They make me cringe.  I (take your pick) detest...abhor...loathe spiders.  As far as I'm concerned, there are two things to remember about spiders: 1) there is no such thing as a small spider, 2) there is absolutely no reason for spiders to exist on this earth.  I read once that spiders are so numerous that we are never more than 3 feet away from one of them.  Let that sink in and then take a good look around your present location.  I'm beginning to itch.
     So, two spider stories before today's poem.  The first concerns that childhood classic, Charlotte's Web.  One weekend when my daughter was much younger, we stumbled upon the animated version of Charlotte's Web while searching the myriad television stations for something decent to watch.  I had neither read the book nor seen the movie, so when she asked to watch it I agreed, which was no small gesture on my part given my arachnophobia.  (The things we do for our children...)  Anyway, I was actually enjoying the movie when I was taken completely by surprise by (spoiler alert) Charlotte's death.  I had grown quite fond of her and I simply sat there, stunned, with tears in my eyes.  I turned to my daughter and asked, accusingly, why she hadn't warned me of this.  Her reply?
"Dad, you hate spiders."
     To this day, I have not read the book, nor will I, and I will never watch that movie again.
     Second story.  My friend/neighbor works in a prison warehouse.  One summer day in 1985 he came to me carrying a Styrofoam cup and stating he had something he wanted me to see.  He turned the cup so I could see into it.  There was plastic wrap sealing the top of the cup.  Clinging to the wrap was a jet black spider with a red hourglass on its abdomen.  I was looking at a Black Widow Spider, which to my knowledge was not indigenous to Pennsylvania.  Strangely enough, it was at once strikingly beautiful and hideously monstrous.  I asked him where had found it.  He told me it was in a shipment of goods coming from Louisiana. 
     Who knows how many of those things are currently roaming Pennsylvania?

Black Widow

(on First Seeing a Live Black Widow Spider, 8/18/05)

 

 

That this deadliest,

sleek, terrible beauty

should be of one possessed

whose only duty

would seem draining the life from all who pass,

depends on your end of the hourglass.

 

 

Humorous aside:  After reading this poem to and discussing it and other poems with an 11th grade English class, the teacher admitted to me that she thought I was writing about a woman.  Not a bad idea.