The Spider

Usually, I let the spiders be;
D. claims they catch flies, though
I've yet to spot a single

body, green bottle, fruit,
or otherwise, trapped in any
of the webs I knock at

with a broom, the fine-woven nets
that seem to sprout overnight,
strung like Christmas lights

from the undersides
of the kitchen shelves.
But today, up at 4 a.m.

to drive D. to the airport, him gone
for three days to Colorado
to read poems about his brother, dead

a year now, the type of death
inadequately punctuated with
an ellipsis, the dawn

outside our little cottage interrupted
by neither house nor street light, the dark
impenetrable, already I know

it will be too much. Too much
to arrive home this evening
to an empty house, too much

to open the sack of rice and find
this ink-colored spider starred
against the grains. It's not fear

that prompts me, but it is
a sensation like a trembling
in meadowgrass on a warm day,

a column of green blades
flattening. When the spider stops
on the counter, between

sink and coffeepot, I do not
hesitate: I snatch a dishtowel
and press my whole weight

into it, into this
junior minister of the
unknowable, aiming

not for his floss-thin legs
but the center of the star
itself, the chaotic heart

of the universe beating—
for the flicker of a
second—

under my thumb.