Landing

It is the day of leaving

when spiderlings

in orders of magnitude

hatch and from inward silk

unfurl toward a new god

caught by the wind.

I walk by the silk curtain

of strands that came from a body.

It is a shining world.

I want to unravel

something from the belly of myself.

It would not be about the spider who crossed water

and brought fire back to my people,

or even the length and brightness of our river

shining like silk in the light of sun and moonlight,

but about the cave up there in the high mountains

with animals made of willow twigs.

They were there before us,

tied with the string of our grasses

as if they were saying, we are one of you, the future,

and then those first ones came down on ropes of animal hair.

There have always been the far travelers

coming down from above.

That’s why our fields are full of hope

and what is a story but this,

silk, the ancestors landing

and traveling who knows where

but sometimes they take your arm

and, caught on a soft wind, you follow.