0381 Spider On The Web Poem by Michael Shepherd

so here I am, sitting here, as I write to you,
half of me thinking about poetry and everything,
half of me thinking, time to shut down the PC,
you're not married to the thing or are you

when a brown spider, all of a centimeter across
is suddenly there in front of me on the PC's shelf,
stopped sideways as if reflecting (?) as a poet should;
and having gained my attention, and
banished all this mindstuff with the tiniest of miracles,
requires of me, I think, that I respond to it:
it's brown on top, delineated by the neatest line of darker brown
with white below, as if carries its own ghost underslung
in some metaphysical memento mori like
a poem by John Donne; memento mori too
to the mind that automates those slightly crepey hands
that busily misspell this communique from the ground
of life.

and now, that required of me,
it sets off along the edge of the shelf, and
going left, the second back of its four left legs
like some ballerina-explorer,
extended over and down the edge with delicate, sensitive,
confident grace; and having reached and turned the corner,
goes down, then has a change of mind (?) :
that tiny computer, provided by that enterprise called Nature
has had what we might call a thought...

and now its pace has accelerated, as if
some anxiety afflicts it; as if
there's somewhere else now that it should be,
and I am pathetically, uselessly
disturbed, concerned...

for what am I to the world
and world to me,
if I know so so little
about these little things;
so vague
about the great?