Ciclo CCXXXVIII

The spider has rebuilt across the window frame — di nuovo — though I swept the silk three mornings past. She does not grieve the lost work. Begins as if beginning were the only prayer she knows. Whether God watches such patience I cannot say; whether the soul prepares itself by repetition or by surrender, I cannot say. The web takes its geometry from what the wind allows, not from intention. My hand this morning would not hold the brush steady for even a line. But the spider’s eight hands know no tremor. Fare and rifare — to make and to remake — perhaps these are the same act to her. The red of the sunrise caught in the silk and held there, briefly, before the sun climbed past.