When Spiders Come Inside
Strange how the rare moment of threat or ugliness
in nature is inevitably man–induced, and then, by
him, perceived…
— Thoreau’s Journals
Such visionary dangling
from its strand of
pearl-bright filament
today in the sunlit
woods: a tiny cruciform
with glowing spots
along deep sable fur
forgiving all our
lives, like Eden’s
proffered grace. The same
black savage fur that
scurried, humped
& stark (as I watched
helpless from the tub
today) over slick
tiles of our bathroom
floor,
and vanished
like an insult,
a Bosch demon, into damp
cracks, peeling darkly,
in our lower wall…
Dan Stryk’s seven collections of poems and prose parables include The Artist and the Crow (Purdue UP) and Solace of the Aging Mare (The Mid-America Press). Dimming Radiance (Wind Publications), a fusion of Far Eastern and Western concepts and writing forms, was published in fall 2008. Recent work appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Isotope, and Shenandoah. He is also a recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship.
Header image by Suzanne Stryk.
