Sometime during a bad late-night argument
On the back porch, I notice
A marble-sized black widow crawling
Along an invisible line strung from the edge
Of a wooden bench to the dark

Corner joint beneath it. It seems to take
The thing forever to span that distance--
Maybe eight or ten inches at most--and once
It reaches the end of the line, it begins
Its precarious return journey. I know

I'm losing the argument. The spider has me
So distracted, and we've gone past the point
When I might have felt free
To say "Stop! Look at that spider--shouldn’t we
Do something?" We are talking tonight

About needs: whose needs are
Being met, whose neglected, and so on.
The usual measuring and weighing.
I take a slow swig from my beer, the mouth
Of the bottle is cool and wet, and I hold it

To my mouth for a few extra seconds.
In the corner, the porch-light finally catches
A single strand plucked into motion
By the delicate black pacing of the spider.
It looks so alone and intent out there

Balancing itself on thin air
With no support except what it can create
From its own live body. I am
Suddenly filled with admiration. I've already killed
Several of them this summer, crushing

Their shiny globe bodies and sweeping
Round white egg puffs from behind
Whiskey barrel planters filled with basil and mint,
Out from the damp cracks
In the rotting cellar door, but they keep returning

To the same places, one by one, strangely
Persistent--as if some biological
Destiny was at work. When I was a child,
My grandfather would amaze me
By letting black widow spiders

Creep along his bare arms. He could always
Find one clinging to the bottom
Of the trap door to the house’s crawl space
And my sister and I would scream
When he opened his jar and coaxed a fat one

Onto his finger. I wonder now
What it felt like, and I remember
Believing that he would die
Painfully--on the spot--if he was bitten.
There was something almost religious

About the pure physical threat
Of the black widow, its deadly authority
Coming directly from the beautiful rightness
Of its own body. No absentee god facilitates
This encounter--this is the very American

God of self staking out a claim
With this late-night balancing act
On my porch. We’ve stopped talking now,
And my husband lights a cigarette, using both hands
To shield the spark, as if there were a breeze.

It’s a cool night, but still. I can hear the hissing
Of the neighbor’s sprinklers, and I can see
Orion up there as clear as anything.
There is no moon tonight.
One spring camping trip, we came back

From a slow drunken walk on a night like this
To find a firefly brilliantly flashing, caught
In a spider's web attached firmly between
A tent seam and one of the pegged ropes pulling it
Straight. The spider methodically wrapped

Its bundle tighter and tighter, and we couldn’t stop
Watching. Time between flashes got longer and longer,
And the flashes themselves
Became gradually dimmer--until finally
There was nothing left, and we crawled naked

Into our sleeping bags, desperate to make love
Out of this, neither of us knowing
How to talk about what we had seen.
The black widow seems to slip, swings
Upside down, and rights itself

With astonishing grace. My husband is asking
What it is I want, what I need. He crushes what’s left
Of his cigarette under his shoe and reaches out
To touch me. Amazed and frightened
By the spider’s solitary dedication,

I take his hand. I want to talk about the odds
Of two human lovers making a life
Together in a world where one creature
Has to suck what it can from another
In order to simply survive.

(first appeared in The Southern Review)