Why just ask the donkey in me to speak to the donkey in you when I have so many other beautiful animals and brilliant colored birds inside all longing to say something exciting and wonderful to your heart? —Hafiz
Inside this cage,
a spider is making her way
up the ribs. She can walk out
between the gaps at any time.
She doesn’t think it’s a prison.
To her, this is simply
a place for weaving,
an architecture suited
for stringing silks,
a location she’s chosen
for spinning.
The woman who is the cage,
sometimes she feels the spider inside,
the small steps of the ticklesome legs,
the swirls of the intricate dance.
But most of the time,
it is easier, she finds,
to ignore what is happening inside.
Spinning and spinning, the spider
is weaving a web for the pleasure
of weaving. The web is more space
than substance. It is made not to catch
but to connect. The spider, she steps
through the bars and leaps
with her threads, making visible
the ties to everything else that is.