So there I was in the bathroom doing my thing, when I looked up and saw a spider, delicate and black, climbing up the wall. Later that day I saw another spider in the kitchen, and yet another in my writing room.

A sign, perhaps, for in Native American myths, spiders are weavers of dreams and symbols of endurance (and lord knows I need all the endurance I can get when it comes to my writing).

Or maybe, and probably, I’m seeing spiders simply because it’s spring here in Alaska and the spiders are getting ready to do their summer thing.

Still, I view each encounter as magical, those delicate spider legs, those intricate webs. Hopefully, a few will set up house in the corners of our rooms, catch a few mosquitoes and flies, and bless us with their presence all summer.

In honor of spider love and National Poetry Month, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite spider poems.

Enjoy!

Spider Season

Emily Perez

August and a spider season.
Wolf and hobo spiders thread
their way across our threshold
repairing each day’s damage
with diligence, what we destroy,
casually, while opening a door,
climbing a stair, what we destroy
purposefully, with a hand,
a hose, a broom. They’d bind us
if we let them, forcing
and reinforcing their mummy-wrap,
their swaddling strands, their sticky ribbon.
I’ve mixed feelings about razing
another’s home; I’ve always admired spiders,
their artistry, sufficiency.
When I find them inside, I scoop
them in cups, scare them onto fliers,
grab a strand of silk as it pulses
from the belly, usher them outdoors,
as if to say, one space is mine,
one space is yours, and yet we co-occupy
and overlap, the boundary unclear. I loved
a man once, with arachnophobia
so deep, to merely hint
that one lightly tufted leg had nicked
his arm or neck was to meet
a quivering wreck of a man.
He could not survive here, where
the ceiling’s a playground, junctions
between walls inspire commuters
to traverse on silken highways,
and even the bathtub with its hard-
to-grip sides, hosts the lone spider
hoping for a clumsy fly.

Read the rest here on Garo.

Never to Dream of Spiders

BY AUDRE LORDE

Time collapses between the lips of strangers

my days collapse into a hollow tube

soon implodes against now

like an iron wall

my eyes are blocked with rubble

a smear of perspectives

blurring each horizon

in the breathless precision of silence

one word is made.

Once the renegade flesh was gone

fall air lay against my face

sharp and blue as a needle

but the rain fell through October

and death lay    a condemnation

within my blood.

The smell of your neck in August

a fine gold wire bejeweling war

all the rest lies

illusive as a farmhouse

on the other side of a valley

vanishing in the afternoon.

Day three    day four    day ten

the seventh step

a veiled door leading to my golden anniversary

flameproofed free-paper shredded

in the teeth of a pillaging dog

never to dream of spiders

and when they turned the hoses upon me
a burst of light.

Courtesy of http://www.poetryfoundation.org