Walking Through A Spider Web
By
Jeff Worley
I believed only air
stretched between the dogwood
and the barberry: another
thoughtless human assumption
sidetracking the best story
this furrow spider knew to spin.
And, trying to get the sticky
filament off my face, I must look,
to the neighbors, like someone
being attacked by his own nervous
system, a man conducting an orchestra
of bees. Or maybe it’s only the dance
of human history I’m reenacting:
caught in his own careless wreckage,
a man trying to extricate himself,
afraid to open his eyes.
stretched between the dogwood
and the barberry: another
thoughtless human assumption
sidetracking the best story
this furrow spider knew to spin.
And, trying to get the sticky
filament off my face, I must look,
to the neighbors, like someone
being attacked by his own nervous
system, a man conducting an orchestra
of bees. Or maybe it’s only the dance
of human history I’m reenacting:
caught in his own careless wreckage,
a man trying to extricate himself,
afraid to open his eyes.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2018 by Jeff Worley "Walking Through a Spider Web," from Lucky Talk, (Broadstone Books, 2018). Poem reprinted by permission of Jeff Worley and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.