Spiderweb – by Edie Popper
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
A spider’s moved into my kitchen window, the northern one
that gets good sun. Eye-sized, single scampering hand:
daily, working at its weave. If a memory is a moth or mote,
the mind tugs it, strand by strand, from its fatty web. Once
recalled, the memory floats, untethered, while the neurons’
spinnerets respin it through new thread. Lightlike then,
the memory can be prone to shift, drift, dapple, dim.
Scientists suggest you don’t recall a memory, but the last time
you remembered it. And to every recollection, changes come
like sunset skies. Learning this, I start to fear remembering.
Every day, dawn’s peachsong pools along the silk; then
come silver spools of noon. The web collects moths,
motes, fruit flies. Small holes like moons of air. The spider
repairs what it can, as it can, until the whole thing finally tears.
Memories mottle, we forget; as the silk is bruised by shade.
Scientists think spiders might house their minds partly in
their webs which, when damaged, bring symptoms of stroke.
To make another home for his dappling mind, my father weaves
his own: boxes, folders, photos, lists. He writes up sticky-notes,
keeps maps and manuals. Labels shelves, doors and drawers.
He lives among the keystones of his mind; the spider tethers
thread to sill. At his desk, when he can, he sketches the plasma
of thought caught in strands of graphite. Grey amber, grey light.
He holds his threads, his tangled age. His hands are getting tacky.
Some of the threads catch where they shouldn’t. Tangle, tug, tear.
He repairs what he can, as he can. Things dim, and every night
the spider in my window weaves. And even when it’s dim
my father spins, again, his spinning spinnerets.▼
Image: Michael Robak - Pexels
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