“Vega,” “Thinking About Symbiosis While Looking at a Spider’s Web,” “Glam Rats”

Listening to the falling rain, the space

between its drops, like the pause

between thoughts—silence. I watch

a pair of goldfinch hover

over the Russian Sage—like the twin stars

rising early over the ridge—move on

to the Echinacea, peck seeds

to sustain them through winter.

A humming bird explores

a single pink Hydrangea bloom

before the flower fades.

The crow caws always.

Last night the eclipse, the moon

brushed rouge—like the red cow

and her calf in the Cave of Lascaux.

I show my grandson the Big Dipper,

three hunters chasing a bear,

how it always points North to Polaris.

We can't feel the earth wobble,

its axis circle slowly, but because it does

in thousands of years the hunters

will point to a different bright star.

Dew drops illuminate parallel threads,

 glint at sunrise, bracelet lengths

of gleaming beads, silken paths

telescope open sky, the spider

watchful on the web's edge.

It's easy to imagine that spiders

work alone, as I imagine everything

depends on me, as if I were the only one

able to repair the past.

Most creatures, though, have evolved

by helping one another—the dotted humming frog

safe in the tarantula's burrow flicks

its tongue to swallow ants and flies,

protecting the arachnid's eggs.

in different colors, blue, chocolate, mink

and champagne, laugh when tickled,

but in frequencies we cannot hear.

So why are we afraid of them?

Ancestral memories of the plague?

Or just because they sneak out at night,

sniff for snacks, with their one thousand, two hundred

olfactory receptor genes that half-eaten

apple, cookie crumbs under the table.

Are they curious or just hungry

as they scuttle under the car, chew

wires that cost thousands to repair?

Studies suggest rats feel regret, are empathetic,

share the distress of trapped cage mates,

figure out how to lift a latch.

Startled by electric shocks when suffused

with the scent of cherry blossoms, rats pass down

the fear to grand pups, who rapidly retreat

from the aroma for no apparent reason. I've wondered

if my fears, like public speaking, are similarly inherited—

an ancestor accused of witchcraft by a hostile crowd,

and nothing to do with me.