Sister Spider (Susan)

I put away the pots
From the evening meal.
The pan cupboard rattled.
Dust balls trembled out
Onto the floor
And with them
A spindly-legged spider.
Fleet with fear,
She rushed across
Red spaces on the tile
And wobbled to my net – a paper towel.
I shushed her
Out the door.
Forsythia blooming
In the yard
Beckoned with ghostly
Yellow-waving arms.
I whispered to her,
“Live to spin
A filament from my soul.”

-Susan Schefflein
Published in Pandora: A Literary Magazine
Fall 1982 © S. Schefflin