a compound eye,

and labium, thread, antennae,

metathorax curved, meso

segmented, mandible palps for

biting, sucking, sipping—and some

of the hundred legs, spotted trochanter and

coxa, femur and tibia, translucent

barbed feet. Is this the one who

flowed like an oval of shadow up

the wall, a nimbus. Is it impossible

for me to be good. Is it possible for us

to try harder to kill this planet

slower. Would I kill this animal again

if it did its undulation above me

along the wall. Is this the best that I can

do this morning to work against the killing

done in my name all over the earth.

Quarantine Argiope

Some kind of egg-sac was fitted into the

angle between a 12-bevel doorframe

and the wallpaper,

by the door inside whose transom window

a herd of blue mud-dauber wasps

had commandeered a paper-wasp nest

close to the porch past which the 500-pound

bear had trudged. Today I looked closer—

something like a giant bald

bumblebee, nesting in a shell—

an inch-fat spider. With a juice glass

and a large postcard,

I trapped the glorious dancer—a female

Argiope, the one who sleeps in her

nest outdoors next to her woven

z

z

z

z

z

z

z

z

z’s. Her dorsal pattern was like lichen,

the edges of each petal lifted—

her great omphalos back ocher,

the irregular spots cream, she drew in her

yellow legs with their bright black joints. I took her

down to the pond, laid the tumbler near a

cross-snatch loom of weeds,

and watched till she waddle-picked her way out, and

finicked up

several stems which

gave, under her massy weight.

The marks on her back were luminous:

an archer’s bow pulled all the way back.

Now the first flicker of the fall

is jumping low, along the lawn,

sipping the long

worms up.

The orb spider mother is safe in the meadow.

Tomorrow her web will span a foot,

the sleep we will share rising silver in the

air around her. I could not kill her to be

sure she would not come into my room in the

middle of the night and lie down on me

to pray. I could not kill her now,

to prevent that.

Not Once

Not once—not when I toppled, rigid, a

5'7" pole-pine felled,

stiff as a board, a five and a half foot

plank, 16 x 32,

and not while I wallowed on the rug among

his oxygen tubes, and my cane, and his 8

wheelchair wheels, and not when I sat by his

hospice bed, chirping I’m fine!

and not the next day, when the brilliant violet

and charcoal slashed and slathered in my easy-life skin,

or days later when the purple turned yellow and the

blue green—never once when I

said No pain, Nothing broken,

did I feel lucky, did I measure the force of the

blow, the floor speeding up like a heavyweight’s

smash to my cheek and eyebrow. Not until today

did I begin to feel grateful