so here I am, sitting here, as I write to you, <br />half of me thinking about poetry and everything, <br />half of me thinking, time to shut down the PC, <br />you're not married to the thing or are you <br /> <br />when a brown spider, all of a centimeter across <br />is suddenly there in front of me on the PC's shelf, <br />stopped sideways as if reflecting (?) as a poet should; <br />and having gained my attention, and <br />banished all this mindstuff with the tiniest of miracles, <br />requires of me, I think, that I respond to it: <br />it's brown on top, delineated by the neatest line of darker brown <br />with white below, as if carries its own ghost underslung <br />in some metaphysical memento mori like <br />a poem by John Donne; memento mori too <br />to the mind that automates those slightly crepey hands <br />that busily misspell this communique from the ground <br />of life. <br /> <br />and now, that required of me, <br />it sets off along the edge of the shelf, and <br />going left, the second back of its four left legs <br />like some ballerina-explorer, <br />extended over and down the edge with delicate, sensitive, <br />confident grace; and having reached and turned the corner, <br />goes down, then has a change of mind (?) : <br />that tiny computer, provided by that enterprise called Nature <br />has had what we might call a thought... <br /> <br />and now its pace has accelerated, as if <br />some anxiety afflicts it; as if <br />there's somewhere else now that it should be, <br />and I am pathetically, uselessly <br />disturbed, concerned... <br /> <br />for what am I to the world <br />and world to me, <br />if I know so so little <br />about these little things; <br />so vague <br />about the great?<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0381-spider-on-the-web/
