Tag: nature

spiders

Posted on by Shelly Strebel in For Real Though, Obits 
READ TIME 0:43-1:22


I watched the juicy spider 
mercilessly murder 
the blimp, sweet bumble bee 
that flew into its messy weave, 
Unsuspecting.

A gardener at heart, 
I know that my spiders are beneficial. 
I need my spiders. 
And I know that what happened between the two of them in the side yard
was perfectly natural. I didn’t intervene.

But then, relatedly or unrelatedly (I admit),
I often dust and worry the spiderwebs away
from the deck and the chairs and the plants. 
And only then do I think about what it took
To spit that stick of a mess. How vital it is to them.

I wonder if the spiders will come and smell me 
while I am swishing their webs away, 
and find, and punish me later in my sheets. 

I think about how, and how many times then,
Now my own web has been dusted away 
by an immediate, natural hand.

And then, rather than feel sorry for my spiders,

I marvel at how quietly, intrinsically, and constantly, they rebuild, 
and I wonder what the fuck is wrong

with me.

Quaint Notes on Ruin

Posted on by Shelly Strebel in For Real Though
Read Time: 0:30

“I bet the two of you could move mountains. I bet you could,” said someone addressing our couplehood.

–And we did move mountains.

And in the process, we made it hard where it could have been soft, and called it ancillary where it was necessary. All of our years together now talk behind our backs, making us out to be avaricious, idiot fools because we did move mountains.

We leveled off some really beautiful mountains, thinking that that would rid us of valleys of misunderstanding. We backfilled emptiness. Topography knows that without mountains, we’d have no valleys. But we called it development; we called it progress.

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