A web full of baby spiders, each the size of a tear drop, vibrating in place until blown on and then falling down toward the end of threads spun from their own tiny bodies, each crossing over that of its siblings’. Yellow sac, brown recluse, golden, it’s almost impossible to identify what they will become— poison or not. Hunters or gatherers. A female wolf spider carries her eggs in a silk sac on her back until the spiderlings hatch, disperse, ballooning, kiting, releasing their own gossamer lines to catch the wind, traveling, sometimes, kilometers. Halfway between New York and Napoli, ships report spider landings. Mortality, not surprisingly, is high. I am waiting to hear from my friend’s husband if his wife made it alive through the night. Meanwhile, the sun strokes the threads of the web as if love and this, the start of a long journey. I blow softly on the web, watch the tiny things tumble, watch them fly.
Sarah Wetzel is the author of the poetry collection, The Davids Inside David, recently released from Terrapin Books. She is also the author of River Electric with Light, published by Red Hen Press, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, published by Anhinga Press. When not shuttling between her two geographic loves—Rome, Italy and New York City—she is Publisher/Editor at Saturnalia Books and a PhD student in Comparative Literature at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. See sarahwetzel.com.
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