Huntsman Spider
We warmed our cold hearts over the gossip. Something about four pair of seven-segmented walking legs and silk spinning organs. The body tissue of the prey dissolved by enzymes producing a liquid that gets sucked up when its work is done. It sounded like a Marvel comic book. They can travel long distances by ballooning on the silk thread. Do not fear imagination, for imagination too may contain reasoning if one is prepared to accept reasoning without preconception. Often altered by fearful thinking, imported in bananas, there’s no conspiracy. As accidental as a stray impression. They bite the boat workers, who show so little concern for their comfort, but they are not dangerous. They’re mottled and drably colored, eight eyes, four pointing forward. They hunt at night and can move sideways with great agility. A reflective man is not at first a contented man, for he shall find many disturbances, but continued reflection shall place them in relation to all that may be discovered, and this is all that can be asked of a man. A man’s courtship, however, is complex, with the females guarding hidden egg sacs, their round consequential eggs laid inside. Hinder not fortune, which has been thrown upward, for it shall descend equally and with greater speed. How deeply then may you be altered by a stowaway? Is the boat ever yours?
0 Comments
|
Rich IvesRich Ives has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander and the 2012 winner of the Thin Air Creative Nonfiction Award. His books include Light from a Small Brown Bird (Bitter Oleander Press--poetry), Sharpen (The Newer York—fiction chapbook), The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking (What Books--stories) and Tunneling to the Moon (Silenced Press--hybrid). |