FOR SLEEP

My daughter’s terrified of spiders; at night she worries

they’ll crawl over her while she’s sleeping, and sometimes when she’s sleeping

she dreams they do, and wakes up and runs to my bed,

crying while I try to soothe her. I tell her

how they’re sacred to some Indian tribes, I take her outside

where one has strung a glistening web under a beam

in the narrow walkway between our house and the next,

a sight she actually does find beautiful—but the spider,

hanging there, swaying a little in the breeze,

she cringes from. I take down a book to show her drawings:

crab spider, orb-weaver, wolf spider dragging her egg sac

into the long grass. I teach her spinnerets,

those makers of silk. But soon she knows tarantula, black widow,

the suffocated housefly bundled in white threads.

She understands the poison, the devouring mate,

how love is less than the slimmest spun strand.

She wakes up alone, can feel the tiny legs ticking across her cheek,

the small malevolence that seeks her out; again

she runs to my bed, and burrows in beside me,

and I hold her until she quiets, and we wait together for sleep.