A
s someone with arachnophobia I can honestly say there aren't many things in this world that give me the jitters like those eight legged, evilly malicious, demonicly malevolent creepy crawlies we call spiders.
In fact, I find it difficult just watching them crawl about on the television (both literally and in documentaries and horror movies). So you can be pretty sure that when my wife calls out to me to come and kill a spider, male brevado aside, I'm more freaked out than the spider who's scurrying away from the broom/newspaper/ boot that happened to come to hand. Plus the spider can generally tell by the way I'm dancing frantically around and screaming uncontrollably that I'm not really into the whole getting close to him/her thing.
Now I know there are plenty of varieties of spiders and some of them could definitely kill me, yet I've been told, by so called friends, that all spiders without exception actually want very little to do with me. Apparently being about 1000 times bigger than they are, puts them off the idea of interacting with me in any significant manner (you know; crawling on, biting and consuming me in my sleep). They keep to themselves, live there little lives with no interest in us humans and even manage to do some good, catching pests such as flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches.
So what's my problem?
Hey, I never said it was a rational fear. There's just something about those hairy legs, beady eyes and poison dripping mandibles that gives the smallest of spider the mental edge over me.
Therefore, in an effort to even the playing field and put my irrational (according to everyone else) fears into perspective I decided to try and write a "positive" spider poem, if there can be such a thing. I'm not sure how successful I was, but here's my attempt:
The Lonely Treehouse
Glistening filaments of silver
Catch the dawning golden rays
While clinging dew that hangs like tears
Is bound within a maze.
A chill wind soars through the boughs
And tears drop one by one
Still the strands remain unbroken
As a home is slowly spun.
The sun tracks its way across the sky
Crawling slowly east
As a structure now begins to form
And grow without surcease.
Night creeps up unbidden
And darkness takes the fore
While hooded eyes search intently
Filled with hunger and with more.
Unfazed by nighttime walkers
And the eyes that glow so red
A tiny little soul
Spins a tangled web.
And slowly out of nothing
A complex form evolves
In a home between two branches
Lives a spider and her goal.
Days pass by unnoticed
And the world goes on around
As the spider keeps on spinning
Round and round and round.
And finally when she's finished
A blur of vision and of sound
Comes crashing through the foliage
And knocks the whole thing down.
Yet without a second thought
Nor without a backward glance
She again begins her spinning
And the steps to her lonely dance.
