The Patience Of A Man Playing Spider Poem by RIC BASTASA

i am not afraid if soon you will miss the dogs
earlier

and i will be left as a hazy background where the dogs
play with you

one will bark at me as though i am an unwanted guest
trying to please you

i do not mind
i promise myself that in your lonely moments i must take
every inch
patiently


up the tree i can behave like a spider
weaving my own kind of cobwebs

i must meet silence with silence
peel upon layers of wisdom like a geologist figuring out
what really happened in the past


such stories, such interpretation
such love which once found its existence among the rugged rocks
beneath those buried ruins
of a kingdom or an old church
long vanished by the forgetfulness of time
by the cruelty of the seasons