after listening to Ezekiel Fugate
This small gray spider
descends from the ceiling
and stops right in front
of my face—
I cannot say I love it,
but I still myself
to honor this bulbous
and elegant being
fourteen billion years
in the making who came
from the same cosmological
singularity out of which
evolved acorns and
red squirrels and comets
and apples and my hand
and you, so, “hello,” I say,
as marvel stitches itself
into fear, and I stare
as we both dangle there
on the thread of the moment,
two characters in the one big story
arriving here together to meet
whatever comes next.