Arachne built her web in the corner of the porch on my husband’s workshop. Every day for weeks I watched as she added more strands and expanded her kingdom. She appeared to eat well. One day she was munching on an unlucky katydid that was bigger than she was.
Then she began to write, expressing herself in zig-zags. She was a natural geometrician with instinctive skills, a wonder to watch as she sat quietly in her web, waiting for lunch to fly in.
Today I discovered her web empty. Her body was lying on the concrete below. It broke my heart. I cried.
This has been a difficult year. We took our calico cat Peaches to the vet in early January for her yearly check-up. As I was going out the door to leave for the vet‘s office, my sister called me, in tears. Her daughter Kim was being placed on a ventilator. Her COVID-19 infection had turned deadly.
At the vet’s, we discovered Peaches was dying of lymphoma. We had no idea. She crossed the rainbow bridge on January 29. A few days later, my niece passed away on February 2.
In September, we lost another loved one on my husband’s side of the family. Our niece lost her young husband to COVID-19.
Perhaps it’s silly to cry over a dead spider. Spiders die all the time, but Arachne’s death was that one small event that seemed to trigger my grief. It also reminded me of the fragility of life.
No person, pet, or critter is insignificant. Spud McKenna knows that, and so does Sissie Stevenson.
Every living creature is part of our natural world. We are connected together.
I came back inside and jotted down this poem for Arachne.
Arachne
She’s gone.
Her home is empty.
Her slender body,
with its perfect pattern
of yellow and black, lies
lifeless below on concrete.
The writing in her web
she left behind,
like a poet
who never finished
her life’s songs.
Her legs,
like thin ink pens,
will never write again.
Perhaps she succumbed
to the frosty night air
or she reached the end
of her cycle of time.
We placed her body on
a dried brown leaf
and slipped her
back into her web
to rest in peace,
surrounded by her work,
until storms blow
and lift her on their winds
to return her to nature.