'A First Unfallen Church It Might Have Been' - Paean To A Spider Poem by Warren Falcon

'But if it ends
the start is begun' - William Carlos Williams *1

'a first unfallen church it might have been.' - Nathaniel Mackey *2


to engage a spider
where
once were roses

becomes a geometry which
indeed
a spider is


its shape, that is, a
spider
at web's edge,

waits


or is it

weights?


Newly dead
I swore you
to a would-be
cloud

bore you to the lowest boulder

I, too, soon to be shroud


you lived silent enough to be
ignored
so passing, yours,

calls attention
well deserved


pity or verse?
both in one?

the Worst


Epitaph for a Spider

bidden, it bore

not a grave
but a door

where is no need to knock


its life grokked
it is no longer

there's no mock in
it tho
as it was and now is


all that is not
never
was its business

but its was only to
obey
That which bade

spider
poet
maker

it made


all praise to the Bidder


Paean to a Spider

the tactility of the spider
bemused
concentrates skies *3

first days here on the mountain - I speak to
it every morning from the john me wondering
at its slow slow movements for three days till
fourth its legs all curled tuck tightly beneath
its carapace I blow at it from the cold seat -
bunched draws round my colder ankles -
it budges not at all I realize it is deceased
its legs uniformly creased a beauty to see
first time ever've felt remorse for bug any kind


lifting Spider up with toilet paper so soft
double ply-ed solemnly march Spider on
bier so soft softly into still harder winter
snow and darker woods Middle-March
flip flops no socks slow going find a rock
up near the woodshed so place Spider
there with oddest prayer ever in my life
but Lord Buddha helps re: 'all sentient
beings' etcetera etcetera que sera sera


so perform brief bone chill rites then slide
down the path patch to my ground floor
entrance to hot shower then to Hopkins
poem - The Windhover - the more meaningful
than ever for its 'dappled-dawn-drawn things'
now rather substituted or addendum-ed to
prayer ponder 'threaded-sewn-moaned things'
strangely mourned actual tears born no doubt
of projections upon small cringes majestically
formed objectively perceived from secret
sightless spaces suspended cocooned in
darkness or once in close woods August last


Requiem

the fragility of the web
infused
penetrates spaces *4


a web
it
was

there strung

and
purled

pearled between limbs

beneath trunks amid

fiddle ferns spun

between brittle sticks


there mute legs

somehow click


tho no ear hears

but

trembles


feels


which are ways

of knowing


but work they
unwinding
beneath faint stray leaves

each strand somehow
sticks

echoes catching where
spider
tufts sough


a
brief
webbed kingdom

such sleights
do filaments trace

alone with the Alone *5





________________
Footnotes *1 William Carlos Williams line from 'Spring and All'.
*2 is a line of Nathaniel Mackey's from 'Song of the Andoumboulou'.
*3 & *4 are riffs on these lines below from William Carlos Williams 'Spring and All' p32:

The fragility of the flower
unbound
penetrates spaces

*5 Title of a mystical Sufi poem by the great poet Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī. A Sufi mystic, poet, and philosopher born in Murcia, Spain on the 17th of Ramaḍān (26 July 1165 AD) , Ibn Arabi was one of the great mystics of all time. Considered a Saint, his counsel is to wake up as one 'alone with the Alone'.