I'd heard about the Spider gods from legend,
lore, and myth. They live high up above and spin,
sew all the clouds together. So I knew it was them
who wove a thunderstorm the night my child
died, they who webbed Heaven gray and made the
rain the way they often do. I felt my coming
miscarriage, knew when it would be,
and grabbed one of my many handkerchiefs to wrap
my embryo. After he spilt between my thighs
I peered at him a minute, a baby
made of jelly-jam and muddied-up with clots.
I knew that I was much too old
to ever be a mother. With gray-silk
hair and wrinkle-webs all over me, yes, I was too old.
But I'd hoped for miracles after
my husband died; I figured that this pregnancy
would be different than the six before, a final
chance for child.
But that night I folded up the fetal
gore in a handkerchief from my collection and buried
it outside beneath the ratty thunderclouds,
woven by the Spiders in the sky.
They fly up there, you know, these arachnid giants,
they scuttle on our atmosphere, hanging
upside-down on it, then ride jet streams across the
world. And these immortal Spiders with their eight
nimble legs and their secreted silk
construct the bulging clouds, fishing nets to
catch the sun falling down to Earth,
warming up the egg-sack clouds of their precious young.
But Spiders are a cursed race, meant to
always suffer. And their eggs hatch far too soon
and spill the babies out.
For that's what rainfall
really is: embryonic drops, miscarriages from
a race of cursed giant Spider gods. These Spider-
babies rained the night when I cried and buried deep
my latest child made of jelly. I thought
he and I were isolated, alone in this recluse shack.
But then massive shadows, cast by lightning,
spotted the grass around me.
The Spiders
hung above my eyes, rappelling from storming
Heaven on their ropes of cloud-silk, and they
swayed like swinging pendulums that could have
cupped a hippodrome. At first
my mouth outlined a bubble that I popped
with my screaming breath. And the closest Spider
lowered a finger-full of web-cloth to me
and wiped away my rain-thinned tears.
And then I smiled in the rain, knew
the Spiders understood, these curse-tangled
giants: I had wasted all my eggs on
an insufficient womb, and these Spiders
lost infinite children every time it rained.
So we cried together, and I gave the god giant just
one white silken handkerchief to keep. Then we all
went home. Hours later the rain thinned
and left one arch-cloud in the sky:
a rainbow made of
spider web
whose bands were white and gray.
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