A small spider had crawled into the keyhole of the door. I fetched it out, carefully, and put it in my window with a bit of leaf, where she - if it was she - could catch the wind's not-so-soft talk, and plan the rest of her life.
For a long time she was motionless. Or so it seemed, for I don't know what adventures she might have risked in the night. Nor do I know whether, in the day hours, she was unable to move, or waiting for something to happen, or, simply, asleep.
She finally grew a small bottle-body, and ran a few strands up and down the screen. And then, one morning, she was gone.
It's a hot and dusty world. Glimmering, and dangerous. Once a little jumping spider, on a porch railing, came to my hand, and stood up on its back legs and stared, with exquisite green eyes, into my face. You can say that it wasn't so; it was so. This was on a warm summer day. A few sailboats were gliding around the harbor that stretches out and becomes the ocean, and who knows where the world ends. Good luck, little spider of the keyhole. Live as long as you can.
Mary Oliver, 2004
