Lisa Creech Bledsoe
Web Breaker
I have decided not to wait.
The sky-blue Commelina blossom
lasts only one day.
Nothing happens later—
it’s all now.
This morning’s fog is slowly melting
against the spider webs slung
hickory to hawthorn
and in the fields
between goldenrod and ironweed.
I do not take a stick
through the field into the woods;
only myself after I let go
of what I used to have.
What I crave, good or bad,
is giving this moment full attention,
loosing myself from discrete values
and becoming continuous, variable.
Today, I walk through
the webs without breaking them.
This is something you and I know:
earth, river, and sky come apart—
all dissolve into one consciousness,
though neither of us can explain it—
we are here and not here,
understood yet uncertain.
So I gather my shimmering, blurred
particulars & probabilities, then walk
without guessing where I will be,
knowing I will be somewhere
different and possible.
How lovely the spiders
should feel no dismay at my approach
and would turn, perhaps, to watch
my evanescent, quantum wave fade
after I pass through.
_______________
Author’s Comments: Except in winter, it’s advisable to walk through the deep woods of our mountains with a long stick. Otherwise you’ll catch plenty of webs—and a few grouchy spiders—in your face and hair. I avoid the webs whenever possible, but a steep mountain trail requires careful attention, and a good walking-and-web-breaking stick solves both problems, although it’s hard on the spiders. Which got me thinking: what if the ability to pass through webs was my superpower?
Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry: Appalachian Ground (2019) and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in American Writers Review, The Main Street Rag, The Public Poetry 2020 Anthology, Flatbush Review, Jam & Sand, SWWIM Every Day, The Writer’s Cafe Magazine, Cabinet of Heed, and others.
Editor’s Notes: Commelina is also known as spiderwort. The image spider web (Vexels) is superimposed on waves of color/abstract gravity waves (Wallpapersden)