Ciclo LXIV

The light this morning comes grey and soft through the window, and I watch a spider repair her web with a patience I no longer possess. Each thread is placed with a deliberation my hand cannot match — mine shakes, hers does not. La pazienza è la chiave di tutto, they say, and I believe it watching her. The web grows not by force but by the accumulation of small, certain acts. I, who once sketched the flight of birds and the flow of water, now find my greatest study is this: how a creature eight years old in France can teach a man of my age what mastery truly is. The thread holds. The web fills. And I — I write, because the page receives what my trembling hand cannot keep.