Spider Killing Poem by Hans Ostrom

With two too many legs
and a gossamer treachery that stopped flies
and bound them in their own terror, spiders,
when I was younger, were to be killed.
The logic was unspoken but we faithfully assumed
that insects were bugs; spiders, evil.

Wound a daddy-long-legs anywhere
and it would fall into a little pile
like so many broken brown threads;
guts of a wolf spider stuck with a stick
oozed out creamy white like the center of a chocolate.

But now, on a Wednesday of nuclear-weapon tests,
nothing seems so uncertain as arachnicide:
Technicians subvert the arid, flat face
of Nevada, testing gadgets that melt planets in theory,
incinerate revenue in practice.I stand
in a steamy bathroom and debate with myself
the death of a spider poised on perspiring
ceramic tile.

I spare the spider this time; then step
into the blasting shower and clouds of steam
pouring forth like fallout. Spider and I
each stay in fogged, vague corners
as Nevada's strata rumble
with secrets of modern warfare.
The shadow of the Final War is a delicate cruelty,
strung across doorways and other passages,
sometimes stopping the mind and binding it
in a moment of terror.

Winner of the 1979 Harvest Award, U. of Houston, judged by Stephen Spender