The Bridge Spider

Crossing the pond’s bridge in the breezy morning
I saw a glint of sunlight suspended in
the air — a single strand of spider’s silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base
but pointing off towards the trees across
the windblown pond, as straight as any sunbeam.

I could not see the other end on which
the spider drifted on the shifting wind,
though moving on the bridge I tried to catch
the sun’s reflection on that silken beam.

The wind was fresh and as it shifted course
it blew the unseen spider side to side
above the pond — the only sign of this
the shifting angle of the shining silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base.

The spider did not know where it was going —
only the opportunity of the wind,
the tether of its silk, the chance of landfall
on the farther shore — or of watery
failure. But it trusted in the wind.

Envoi
Help me, Lord, to trust your Spirit, which
has borne me up thus far, to thank you for
the gift of skill to spin my course. I know
not where you send me, but I trust the wind.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

2006

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