w i n t e r
watching the web shake
The lock turns easy in my gloved fingers. I question the sense of having a deadbolt on the inside of a building anyway, but Bynum is old and the warehouse went through a lot of hands over the years. There's a writing spider in the office window, its yellow and black body almost a nickel round. I get close and rummage around the desk. It starts to shake its web, first slowly and then as I get closer, it bounces with massed energy in its frail long legs.
They say the bite of a writing spider is like a bee sting, but otherwise harmless.
I just remember them from when I was young and the neighborhood yards and woods and creeks were my domain. I recall seeing them once in awhile and to me they were always a symbol of luck. It may have been their rarity or their beauty, but I think it was more the fact they never ceased to amaze while keeping me at bay because I didn't want to get bit; just watch the web shake.
As a child I knew nothing and everything about beauty all at once.
I had no idea it existed, but knew the best place to spend a summer day was on the sunny rocks in the middle of a creek looking for crayfish. Or swinging on a rope over a seemingly impossibly far drop, just waiting for the thin line holding me to give, daring it.
I knew a bicycle was the best (and only way) to get around, and that twilight was best viewed from the bench just above the third tennis court at the local pool with a bag of chips and a Cheerwine in a can.
I knew all kinds of things about beauty I'd take with me and use later.
The smooth bamboo in the forest by the spooky house. The house with the porch falling in on itself. The house with torn screens and a propped up Grand Prix in the front yard. The one with flaking paint where there was paint at all, and the crab traps leaning against the side that always made the place smell like a mix between my grandmother's basement and the ocean captured just inside a conch.
That bamboo would come back as the smooth calves of a woman, and the porch would be my heart; sometimes heavy with age and weight, but always willing to take on more by design. The rope, tight, is my endurance, and by now it has several knots tied in it where it has broken before.
And of course there are always the crayfish...
goodnight 12.15.99