Relationship With a Spider
Alex Johns

Is a real possibility
when you find her,
in wintertime
minding three eggs in a cold basement,
alive?

She founded her web in part
on a book you need,
but to move it would mean
wrecking her reason to be:

those little spheres
suspended like tiny planets,
earth-colored fruits
on translucent limbs.

Breathe out, and she stirs.
The string-thrum music through her
feet then abdomen.  A Romanian

saint spent sixteen years
in solitary confinement
with a single roach
to confide in, and he loved her who
kept him alive and sane.

They conversed,
and he gave her a name.

Were enough days permitted to pass,
The Lord would have had
to allow a taste from that Tree.

You won't disturb spider further.
She
gets to stay.  The way
Love grows
in a cave.


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