Monday's Poetry: "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator 

For the past several months, I have been sharing my bathroom with a spider, not a big, hairy, uncouth tarantula, but a small, delicate creature who measures no more than an inch in circumference toe-to-toe.

Although I don't remember the exact date upon which we initially encountered each other, it had to have been at least early March, or perhaps even before that when I noticed her (and I feel she is a "she") for the first time.    I was heading into my morning shower and stopped to open the small bathroom window - for steam control - when I saw her sitting high up on a corner of the window screen, inside of the window-and-screen unit.

Itsy-Bitsy, or "Itsy" as I was soon calling her, stayed in roughly the same spot for the remainder or the spring and summer, moving no more that an inch or two at any given time.  I had no idea what she was surviving on, but if I raised a finger toward her, she would move slightly to show me that she was still alive and doing her spider thing.

Then, about two weeks ago, after I had begun leaving the window open for hours at a time to let in the cooling autumn air, I looked for her one morning and noticed she was gone.  A day or so later she appeared on the wall outside of my shower, but again was very docile.  The next morning I found her in the shower, and being in more of a hurry than I perhaps should have been, I turned on the water.  She scampered out of the way, and managed to stay safe and dry while I lathered up and rinsed off.

Yesterday Itsy was standing guard at the hook where I hang my towel.

At some point my little friend will probably leave, or at least crawl into the darkness behind my bathroom bookcase (It's a great place to read!) for a winter retreat.  And then who knows what will happen next spring.   Perhaps she will have had a hundred little "Itsy's" and they will all be sharing my bathroom!

I will keep you posted!

Today's poetry selection is "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman.  It's a very short piece in which Whitman uses a spider sitting on a ledge as a metaphor for his soul.  (Whitman's spider cast a web - Itsy has not.)  Instead of reminding me of my very flawed soul, my little Itsy is more of a metaphor for the closed-in spring and summer that I have endured - thanks to the lingering pandemic as well as having my wing clipped in the form of a broken arm.  Like Itsy, I have spent many long weeks sitting in my own corner.  But she survived, and I will as well!

A Noiseless Patient Spider

by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider, 

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, 

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, 

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 

And you O my soul where you stand, 

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, 

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, 

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.