Donbaas tableau

~  It was a lovely,  sunny,  autumn day,

with spiderwebs  flying about in the air like snow. ~

-- Khrushchev Remembers (Eng. translation 1970), p. 458

A Meditation for Mother’s Day

[From a letter to my Mother in the old-folks home.]

~     ~     ~

The other day -- a sunny one, stirred by the merest of breezes -- a friend and I sat on a low wall  conversing (much like Pooh and Piglet in similar circumstances), in a shady spot of the University of Maryland campus, where I now work part-time, in addition to my regular job.  He remarked, à propos of nothing (for there was really nothing much to be à-propos of, save the drifting clouds and the dreaming birds, neither of which had anywhere they had to be, in any sort of haste or hurry) that his wife has an absolute horror of snakes.   Simply cannot abide ‘em.

Now, snakes (I mused aloud), I can take them or leave them, just as you please;  but one creature that many people shrink from, but which I positively enjoy, is spiders.   These have held an especial fascination  ever since I read a detailed account of their constructional capacities (webs of various sorts and shapes, according to species, but other contraptions as well) in a book by the science writer Richard Dawkins.  Whenever I spy a spider, I seem to behold a busy little engineer, and am always careful not to disturb his handiwork (or leg-i-work), even to the extent of, if needs be, ducking-under  to go out to the back deck, or refraining from emptying the leaf-barrel, whenever its brim has been spanned with a weft of his recent weaving.

(There is always something new and wondrous in the world of spiders.  Last week they reported a new kind of locomotion in one desert species:  It can do a kind of forward back-flip (if that is the term I want) as it scurries along, whether to relieve its little eight feet from the burning sands, or from sheer high spirits, was unclear.  He can also do a string of them in succession, so that he rolls along like a tumbleweed.)

Yet afterwards, as I drove home, it occurred to me that my fondness for God’s wee octopods  goes back much farther, earlier than Dawkins or even than learning to read:  back to Oak Ridge, by our little white house with its proper white downspout, one sunny day still glistening with a late rain, as you taught me a little rhyme, on a bouncy wee tune, that lives in memory yet (though that was long ago, the day you taught it to me, Truman probably still in office if I reckon correctly, and any number of things not yet invented), and which has been handed down through mothers and grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers through immemorial time, almost back to the first day of Creation.   It goes (in the version you taught me, which is still my favorite;  other variants exist):

            Oh the inky-dinky spider ♪ went up the water spout.

            Down came the rain, ♫ and washed the spider out.

            Out came the sun, ♪ and dried up all the rain,

            and the inky-dinky spider ♫ went up the spout again.

You taught me the hand-gestures that go with it:  downrippling fingers to figure the raindrops sliding down the spout, broadspreading arms to evoke the return of the smiling sun:  but best of all, an intricate, digital concatenation, thumb to finger and finger to thumb (with an asymmetry easier to show than to describe in words), then pivoting on the one link, swiveling upwards a rung, now this way now that (it’s quite difficult even to imagine, unless you are watching yourself do it), in a way that is quite counter-intuitive until you get the hang of it:  all of which represents, or is meant to suggest, the patient slow small steps of our diminutive eight-legged friend, Mister Spider -- whose actual motions, indeed, must exceed in complexity anything or brains can picture or fingers depict -- as he climbs the spout, and then, washed-down, re-climbs it, nothing daunted, as many times as it takes.  This was, in fact, the most complicated physical movement I had ever learned as of that date, rivaling that of tying one’s shoe (a task I had not yet mastered), and scarcely to be exceeded in after-years, until the dos-ee-dos and allemand-left of square-dancing.

~

Well, Mother, such is the gift you gave me that day, so long ago;  and which, in the absence of grandchildren of my own, I  from time to time  pass on  to such of the wondering toddlers of our cul-de-sac  as care to gather round and learn the old lore.   For there will ever and anew be fresh children, and that inky, dinky spider  will never cease climbing his spout.

POEMA ARANEAE

According to those invaluable blogstats,

someone just found this site by a search on the following Boolean string:

        french poem about spider

Vous êtes le bienvenu(e), monsieurdame !  Et pourtant …  To our great confoundment, we are forced to confess, that hitherto  we have had no such offering.  This yawning gap we now hasten to amend, as follows:

Que not’ frère l’araigne

ce tribut ne dédaigne

car il comble un vide:

ce poème arachnoïde

Philological note:

Spiders speak a more classical, even old-fashioned, variety of French, than what you and I learned in class.   Their word for ‘spider’ is the chastely Latinate araigne, from Latin ARANEA (cf. Spanish araña).  The modern bastardization is araignée, which by rights should mean “spiderweb” or maybe “spider-clowder” (though I personally have never witnessed  a clowder of spiders;  they tend to be rather standoffish).

I would also love to report that dédaigne was the subjunctive of an archaic *dédaindre;  but alas, ‘tis not so, it’s dédaigner (from DIGNARI) all the way down.  (Immediately related to our English verb deign, btw, and more distantly to the noun dignity, from the Latin source.)

*

Pour d’autres friandises

de la confiserie 

du docteur Justice,

consultez:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

This morning’s new web

On a front porch bedecked with webs spanning every aperture, as though hung with bunting,

the small, gracile green spiders that have proliferated this season,

today were joined by a larger species:

russet, and about the size of one joint of my thumb.

He reigned supreme at the dead center of his elaborate web,

until I approached to inspect his handiwork.

Here he sings his song:

i’m a big grumpy spider

heh heh heh

i can eats anything

o nooooezzz !!

that monster bigger than me ! ! !

time to make my getaway

on my clever escape-route strand

(heh  heh  heh  heh  heh ... )

(For more fun with our octopodal buddies the spiders, click here.)

IAS grants top honor to Dr Justice

The International Arachnophilic Society has awarded its coveted Medal of Magnificent Merit to Dr Justice  for his newest work of poetic genius -- already a classic -- the incomparable Spider Poem.    The award comes with a financial gratuity (rather an afterthought to the honor itself) of ten million dollars.

Dr Justice,  humbly receiving the coveted award

Said the President of the association:  “This is surely the finest poem on the subject of spiders  in the past five hundred years.”

“The past five thousand, “ the Chairman corrected, with emphasis.

The international consensus is that this masterpiece establishes past doubt, that the scala naturae has its feet planted firmly among spider-kind.

This Way to the Spider Poem =>

-->

Want to read a nice poem about spiders?

Boy, R U in luck !

There’s a swell one  right   =>  here !!  <=

Spider Poem

 *     *     *

*     *

*

I’m in my web.

I made it myself.

*

*     *

 *     *     *

[Footnote:  Such sentiments, remarkably, extend even farther down the scala naturae;  as witness this:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/counting-blessings.html ]

A Soft Touch

(1)

Hanging in the shadows beneath the sleepy eaves,

the petunia pot is very sad.

No rain for days, and none in the forecast.

I’ve watered her from the pitcher,

but have not set her out on the lawn to be sprinkled from the clouds.

“Cannot I go out for a sunbath?” she cries.

“Why must we always wait for rain?”

“Oh, well,

 okay,”

 I say.

(2)

Yet firm and stern  and inflexible of will  am I

when wielding the cruel clippers of iron,

trimming back the everywhichwaysoutspiraling tentacles of the hedge,

and its tentacular tangles, vine-entwined.

Truth to tell, this hedge was never a favorite,

and ever since Snowmageddon bent it double,

lo these several winters ago,

it has been rather an eyesore.

I’ve been trying to train it back straight,

by selective hedging,

with some success.

Standing apart  is an old plastic trash-can

where I normally place the cuttings 

before hauling them down to the compost-heap.

Only…

spanning its brim now  is a delicate web

of sheer perfection, concentric upon concentric strand,

and shimmering at its center, a slender green spider,

with eight shining eyes.

We behold each other, she and I.

Strictly from an engineering standpoint, we must concede

that the can’s aperture is as perfect a framework for stretching a web

as ever might be found in all Nature.

And the spider, appreciatively,  has done her very best work.

To disturb this, would be sacrilege.

So I sigh, and turn aside,

then lay the cuttings on the ground by the hedge,

like flowers on a loved-one’s grave.

~     ~     ~

[Update, three days later] 

She’s still there, dead center of the web.

Still sleekly green and brilliant.

And still hasn’t caught anything, so far as I can tell.

So patient; hasn’t moved.

Well, I can be patient too.