[stylist] Poem - "A Spider"

[William L Houts]

Thanks for your note, Miss Thea.  That an arachnophobe could possibly 
appreciate my rather sad spider poem comes as high praise:  thank you 
dearly.



--Bill






On 3/16/2014 4:56 PM, Miss Thea wrote:
> I love the tactile use of language, Bill.
> Unfortunately, my flesh is crawling now.
> I'll have to write something furry to get rid of that feeling.
> But it is powerful
> I see the remorse, and yet the reasoning: You didn't mean to kill her, 
> yet you felt bad.
> I'm an insect-phobe though, so I'll have to wash. LOL
> In Englishk, you made a pretty powerful impression on me.
> Thea
>
> -----Original Message----- From: William L Houts
> Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 9:57 AM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: [stylist] Poem - "A Spider"
>
> Hi Peeps,
>
> Here's something I just dug up from one of my older, creakier poetry
> folders.  I wrote this sometime in my twenties, and I think it still
> works.  OH hell, why don't I just say it:  I'm in love with this poem
> and wouldn't edit it dfor a mint, LOL.  I've written a few poems about
> spiders, as I love the hideous little monsters somewhat, but this is
> probably the best.  Comments welcome, as always.
>
>
> --Bill
>
>
> ---
>
>
> Sprawled in my favorite chair,
> I  found a spider striving down
> my sweater's cotton roads;
> uncruel, I meant to brush her
> from my collar to the floor,
> but a brainless finger crushed her.
>
> Drunk on ideas the size of salt,
> her witty legs, those marvelous legs
> had skittered her down the wall
>
> to vistas of heaving; the ebb
> and flo of my breathing.
>
> A ruined husk.  I didn't reckon
> the difference between our lives,
> the stellar gap between a spider's
> life and mine:  and this was my task,
> for if it exists, a reckoning spider is
> truly a monster, a foe to be fought.
>
> But she was no monster,
> and I was only a man in a chair,
> reading, with no ill intent:  and yet
> that tiny walker died, a small
> color in the world gone to gray
>
> at my blameless finger's end.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
"Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."

           --Jane Siberry