Two Poems

Migrations

We could have learned from the cinnamon tufts
of sulphur firedot lichen, or dark outlines 
of yellow map lichen, their fungal, algal,
and yeast layers deftly feeding one another,

and from mitochondria, that ancient
migrant caravan; they made it across 
our border. Now enclosed within our
semi-permeable membranes, they keep us 

alive. Cooking up our energy, housed 
in the cells we shape for their shelter —
are they us, are we them? They build us.

Inside our bodies we are munificent, 
adaptable, prone to self-replicating 
networks of fractal beauty, of diasporic joy.

Spiders don’t say

I can’t do this anymore        carry
thread         from leaf to laurel
across a vast deer-wide gap
each morning before first light
only to have it broken again          the Spined micrathena

doesn’t fret          my babies will all get eaten
their slender          silk streamers lovely & light 
to carry them far         I try not to be overbearing 
maybe that’s a mistake
if doing my best doesn’t change things for the better          what then

at home         where the open & shut of screen door 
tugs the spun funnel all summer long        Tegenaria repairs
its white skull-like foramina        elegantly angled
 for capture        beneath the porch light —
each slam vibrating a dangled detritus         of mayflies & moths

weaving a sheet web bowl to top        a doily as elaborate
as your grandmother’s         not chiding the dew —
stop stippling my web to reveal what should remain
cryptic         invisibility restored by mid-morning
Frontinella communis        lures a grass veneer moth to lunch

at a bend in the Rockfish I release          your ashes
near an almost-hand-sized         Dolomedes scriptus
striped fishing spider          w’s on abdomen        wily
it walks on water        dives with bubble        to hunt
gone fishing you would laugh         I gather a silvery orb of air

Amelia L. Williams, is a medical writer, poet, and eco-artist in central Virginia. Her book “Walking Wildwood Trail: Poems and Photographs” benefits regional #NoPipelines causes. She recently received a Pushcart nomination from The Hollins Critic for "Walking the Celtic Ridgeway." She has a poem forthcoming in TAB, and her work has appeared in Streetlight Magazine, The Healing Muse,  Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry, Nimrod International Journal, and K’in, among others. 

Website: www.wildink.net

Facebook: @AmeliaLWilliamsPoet

Artwork by Marah Zada