I’ve written two poems in my lifetime.
The first poem came early in my long journey behind these walls — from a time that, feels like a lifetime ago — about a brown recluse spider clinging to dusty web in the corner of the cell window. Cracks in the window frame allowed heavy outside cold to whistle through. During Fall months waves of icy vapors cascaded from the fissures.
As a general rule of thumb I happily relocated spiders I discovered creeping about the cell. Relocated them to centers of pinched toilet paper wads or bottoms of toilet oceans. Recluse spider bites threaten life and limb in the joint for prison health care can be downright harrowing. I’d be damned if I were to allow that possibility.
I had observed spiders for some time. Observed them rappelling down walls, bungee jumping from ceilings, dodged them free falling from the bunk above me. When in prison it’s easy to take note of things that otherwise fail to generate second notice, and I realized that this miniature death dealer was hungry. The thin fuzzy abdomen, sunken and shriveled like a raisin, laid contrast to the plump well fed monsters of its kind I’d relocated time and again. So I let it be. Although I had a rule that his kind be assisted along to the next journey of existence, I gave in to my soft heart.
The days passed, and the creature clung steadfast to the center of the web. Dust gathered. The hurricane raged, yet the tiny creature bobbed about in the freezing cold as I observed from two feet away in balmy warmth.
By the third week I wondered if life remained in the eight-point exoskeleton. Ever so gently I prodded the shriveled creature with the tip of sharpened NO. 2 pencil causing it to flee about the web in panic, before settling again at the center. Pangs of guilt and sorrow grabbed ahold of me, both for the fact it was still alive and no doubt starving, and for causing it to expend all the energy it did fleeing about its hanging desert. I resolved to put the pencil away.
The fourth week came and went. No insect found the web. Had one fumbled in I’m not so sure it would have stuck for all the dust covering it. Parts of the structure start to unhinge.
Week five — sections have taken to flapping like a ratty flag. I gently blew warmth across the center buy the tiny form didn’t stir. I blew again, longer, still no movement. Sadness gripped me. The tiny brown recluse had starved to death, clinging to the center hoping and waiting.
I can’t help but ponder how so many incarcerated people are like that poor spider — hoping and waiting. There’s a fundamental lesson learned from that tiny life. It’s about life’s greater web of existence and how fortunate we are no matter how unfortunate we feel. I’ve taken it with me all these years, pondered, observed, and made it part of who I am.
i still relocate spiders. Instead of pinched wads of 1-ply toilet paper or raging rapids I gently set them outside.
—Christopher
Icy winds like hurricane blew,
in the center of a prison window.
Web once like diamond glitter,
now tattered and dusty,
forlorn and longing,
flapped partially unhinged.
Memories of fat flies,
from a past time.
Within its center,
the tiny creature clung,
steadfast and patient,
or perhaps hoping and desperate.
For weeks the hurricane raged on.
I watched and waited,
choosing to allow this one life,
no food for weeks came,
save for death’s tolling bell,
and I questioned my actions too late,
an unintended sentence,
as the tiny creature perished,
still clinging,
within icy winds
in an uncaring world.
Christopher 1999
*You can read the second poem I’ve ever written in the post titled This Is Who We Are, We Incarcerated.
