Saving The Spider
I. Not
This is a first. I saw it like a cabochon –smooth-cut
black sapphire against morning’s
porcelain bowl and could not bring myself
to carry it outdoors. It would
drown when I opened the tap.
.
For all my love of the arachnid world’s
crawling gems, and all my
years of banishing but never crushing
spiders, I turned away
from this one. It looked like a crown/ I thought, “La Belle,”
because it was;
but what if Beauty was no more human
than her
Beast?
II. Wherein, time is a factor
From an elapsed thrust, the gladiator’s blood, escapes and hisses
through the air to my face,
spidering it with a rubymask/ he
defended me against meteors,
asteroids, the Perseids of a French summer
night. I
love the scentless world of
gems, the spider’s odorless cabochon body,
the illusion of permanence
that holds me back from crushing a spider
with my sweaty, otiose, human hand.
III. Wherein, the landscape is defined
Hitting the diamond, the sun
spiders out its tunnels of light. They crawl
over the wall, bounce back and
web over
my arm and wrist — even my upturned palm.
Enwebbed by light, I lie
and say, “of course it does
not hurt.” How could anyone
ever
deny Beauty?
Diamond Dog, Unleashed in the Airport
My old arms, like bolts of cloth
unfold, let go in the rapid unroll of silk
from its cardboard cylinder, and the leash
pours out from my fist like water
from a faucet. He is loose. The Diamond Dog
running through the airport, ahead of me
and quickly lost in the soprano sax
of “These Foolish Things.”
Surrender.
I surrender. I’m so spent,
looking for my brother, David,
who bent over to kiss me once in a dream/ then
the spilled amaretto the/ shaking torso/ the
unmitigated oblation of/ melody so/ innocent
it could/ be diamonds/
crushed/ as in velvet/ she,
against, copy/ the old words,
say, “we failed,” that love wasn’t
enough. Diamond Dog jumps
back into my arms/ I am not
allowed
to carry him on board,
so I speak the one spell I know:
“disappear,”
and this is the way you get through the airline doors,
through the gates of the underworld,
bending like cloth falling
off its bolt.
Amulet
Around my neck,
amber enclosed in silver, a
drop of blood
from the eyes of a tree
