Imagine an agile arachnid
Gently spinning a gossamer web
Over your eyelids
Feel the subtle weight
Of her silken net
The little being
Dances and soars
Creating an imaginary eye pillow
A growing, welcome pressure
Weaving waking dreams
You could open your eyes
But why not wait
Just a bit
Let the spider
Do their work
All you have to do
Is lie here
And feel the soft sensation
Of this small creature’s acrobatics
And delicate art
If the waiting is too much
And you do open your eyes
Destroying the fragile fabric
Don’t worry
The tiny spinner will simply start again
You are not alone in this dark night
A sacred spider is watching over you
As soon as your lids close
She is back at work
Finding connections and rest
For now
There is nothing to see
Just feel the web
Growing keeping sticky shut
Shutters to the soul
Note: I wrote most of this very early when I could not get back to sleep – sketching the shape of two other poems as well.
It started to devolve into a kind of nonsense language at the end – I didn’t keep all of this but tried to work a bit of that strange sequencing in, because it captured the feelings, and the effect on mental processing when we are drunk with lack of sleep.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash