In Charlotte’s Web, a pig

watches as a matriarch

wraps five hundred children

in silk.
In your gallery, each infant

has grown into its power

legs in bronze and steel

spread across the room.
We’ve been taught not to invite

this type of attention.
In the animated feature they’re

smaller than itsy bitsy, little semicolon specks

with extra legs.
The same man who wrote

those tiny spiders instructed

the world in the proper use

of commas, clauses, sentences.
Your sentence begins

with a steel limb, outstretched

towards the door. It grows

until it can’t be kept

inside.
How much space can we occupy?
The only time I’ve seen a spider close

its legs is when it dies—each limb

hinging in and folding.
I have learned

to crumple my body small.
You have found a way

to birth the descendants of another

world, some civilization where we

can be this grand.
When I was young, you built

an eight-legged monolith, its abdomen

and thorax ribbed with bronze, it towered

thirty feet above, guarding

thirty-two marble eggs.
When did our fear become so large?
I stood beneath that spread of legs

and looked up

like the diminutive nude

you once sketched

in charcoal instead of bronze.
Those enormous steely spindles

sheltered me

sparely,
left enough visible sky

so that I could remain

terrified.
(If this is what motherhood is like

then perhaps I could stomach

a child.)
When your spider died

you threw yourself into the river

and survived.