Early morning on the dock

The lake is calmer today

I notice the spider doing its delicate work nearby

Being blown about in this gentle wind

Like a sailor high in the rigging of his ship adjusting the sail

In awe that such a tremulous, dainty thing

Filaments so thin they are almost invisible

Can withstand the wind

The anchors somehow holding

She doesn’t know we are going to get the boat today

Her web may survive the wind

But it won’t survive the boarding and disembarking

All her work swept away in a moment

I’m not exactly sympathetic

I am, after all, no great lover of spiders

But here I am in her world

She is not really in mine

She did not invade our cozy cottage

But chose instead to anchor her web

Here in the almost-wild

Perhaps believing she’d be safe from predators

Out here on this point over the water

Not accounting for the biggest predator of all

And watching I notice a much larger web

On the other side of the post

Anchored to the very end of the dock

Its iridescent wisps of thin string

Only visible when you look just right

When the sunlight glints off an upper strand

Were it not for the tiny spider bodies

Traveling along its length

I am fairly certain

I would have missed it altogether

It makes me think of the spiritual world

How we who are moving along the threads of the eternal

Make it visible to those who cannot see

So caught up in their boats and elections and lists

They miss what is right in front of them

The analogy breaks down

As all analogies do

But it makes me wonder what else I am missing

What else I am failing to see

The blue green ripples of the water just past the dock

Always in motion

The regal bearing of our goldendoodle

As she wanders the beach

Sniffing at new smells

The intricate, lacy design of the fallen leaf

Its veins reaching and connecting

The bright yellow St. John’s Wort

Its exploding stamens and black dots lining the petals

Seeming loud against the muted greens

The same God who made the spider

An unlikely creature who fishes in the air

With a net made of nearly invisible thread

Is the same God who carved this lake

with a spade formed from a glacier

And the same God who made our dog

To experience the world best through her sensitive nose

He’s the same God who made the leaves and flowers and trees

And everything I can see along with everything I can’t

This same God gave us poets like Walt Whitman or Wordsworth

Who may not have known the author they were quoting by name

When they wrote about spiders and daffodils

But were surely quoting him just the same

Poets who help us see and experience

The truth and beauty of the world with fresh eyes

For it is more than food which nourishes a soul

I wonder where the spider will build its web

When this one vanishes

If she will choose again to build her home

So near to the water’s edge

Wonder about my own calling

If in my own work, which doesn’t always last,

I can help make visible that which is not quite seen

And yet that which is all around us