(or, The Menagerie pt. 2)

 

My early memories are few and far between

but I remember being tiny and excited

to gawk snakes and bugs and other critters

some lady brought to my pre-K class

to teach us about animals.

I think there was a fennec fox,

but mostly I was fascinated by the spindly-legged tarantulas,

and the giant yellow-and-white python that voided itself on my mom’s favorite shirt.

 

My dad spent my fourteenth summer

tidying the stoop of our front porch.

It wasn’t so bad but for a couple of spiders,

big-bellied and proliferate,

becoming a nuisance in need of eviction.

I watched Dad, fearless of the world as he so seemed,

and must have said something to offset him.

He plucked the nearest spider from its nest and tossed it at my face.

 

Eight years I was a Spider Slayer of the Most Fearful Order.

 

For my second half of college I moved to small-town Oregon

where the weather was wild and the creatures wilder.

I was reminded how to fall in love with the little things

with their unknowable thoughts and simple purposes,

and I, Spider Slayer, after for so long having frozen stiff against the eight-legged

finally melted to understand them as victims of a father’s poor choice, just like me.

 

Today I am Mother of Jumpers.

Clover and Sorrel admire each other from their separate homes,

friendly if not somewhat grumpy when bothered like the rest of us.

Ghost is a more difficult little guy, having disappeared

into the window for three days before reemerging like a certain well-worshipped-someone,

dusty, confused, and clutching to my finger like a newborn babe.

 

I collect their little molted hats in a cup as I watch them grow, careful not to let them disappear at a careless breath.

 

(Hour 8)