87

O let me so long eye Thee, till I be turned into Thee. He sees their stringy, hairy legs twisting in his head, and birds that kamikaze the heart. He sees them in his bedroom, weaving. They float in air, cause small eclipses of the sun on their dew-drenched webs. What we see as beauty in the woods is horror in the mind. The doctor would have preferred hiding from students their diagnoses of schizophrenia. Mind is not intended to be world, but to enter it like an insect. We crawled on the forest floor, pretending to be ants. Now ants have invaded his head; everything that moves disintegrates. When you tap the web with a stick, the spider sends thread into air and sails out upon it. This is call and response, when you are not yourself the spider's keeper. When nothing's left, you will know you're real.

--31 May 2015