Spiders, Egrets, & Other Small Gods
Hanging between the trees, the spiders face each other in mid-air. Their webs are parallel to one another; suburban, domestic. As I watch their spindly legs trace across the latticework I can only wonder what they say to each other. Perhaps they exchange mailbox pleasantries, barely hiding their resentment and flickering with envy. Maybe they are as coworkers circled around a conference table in bland conversation about what should be done for the bottom line. Or maybe they are lovers, suspended in the slippery limerence of will they or won’t they.
Or maybe they’re just spiders, weaving webs as all spiders must in thoughtless proximity to the ilk of their kind. Whatever the reason, I continue on the Big Human Path as Big Humans must, and look for the next minutia to become engrossed with. The trees around me are pockmarked, bored into by hungry beetles or neurotic birds. Bark crumbles from the trunks as skin from a burn, littering the ground below with their sodden brown dander. The leaves woven amidst the roots are painted with some blistering botanical sickness, scorched in fluorescent yellows and bitter orange as they curl towards the sky. Though perhaps this is just the changing of the seasons; all of the land marked for discard by the earth as she oscillates beneath us.
Above the swamp, two egrets circle low, their papery wings bending soft into the cold air. These two are a bit far north for this time of year, but then again seasons have been losing their meaning as more and more we march towards The End. One egret lands all claw-foot and serpent neck in the soft peat of the swamp, looking pensive into the shallow water. Opalescent fish coast beneath, so dully ignorant of the doom poised above. The other egret perches on the emaciated remains of a tree standing weary amidst the reeds. The strangers waft stark against the landscape not their own, and still I wonder at the presence of these ghosts.
The earth turns peevish on her axis, rotating waspishly as I try in vain to intuit her secrets. I suppose it is not for me to know why she is as she is, but how desperately I will try. Sometimes spider legs are just spider legs, but sometimes they’re dowsing rods. I feel lucky to partake in this wake as the ground beneath me dies, and I fade into the molding leaves while they still have cover to offer.
