Tarantula

At a pet shop in the village,

in a battered gothic cage,

he stood guard (or was kept hostage?)

at a little parapet trap-

door. His dirty home was so sad,

his burrow a curled-up scrap

of carpet, that I unscrewed

the wire gate with my Swiss knife—DO

NOT UNSCREW!, it read—and let him through.

Ten stiff bristles uplifted him,

each a comb for his hairy abdomen,

his front legs now and again

waving in an attitude of bliss

as he swayed upon my wrist.

Then gliding like a dugout canoe, its

oars moving in a phalanx,

he rowed across my long arm, strangely

beautiful as the human brain

shining through profligate grief.

When he looked at me with a queer

air, nearsighted as I, did he make me

out to be a giant fern, his perch,

as I have made him now into a verse?

When his creaky spinneret stirred,

I felt guilt—watching him create

a silky floating line in haste—

knowing a sad house has no escape.