Happenstance with Spider Silk

Vincent Hostak

June 4, 2023

From a spider silk path,

a whisper between cedars,

she leaps away 

easy to miss, walking the woods in May.

Events informed by light and dew: 

peel a veil, show another.

The dark maker of threads 

grazes my collar,

vanishes like wren songs,

salvages herself.

The dark-mother carries

a spinneret on her stern

makes good, decamps

races in lace lanes in the woods. In turn,

keeping her landing a secret

something canyon wrens cannot:

Here-in-here, Here-in-here, 

We’re Here-up-in-here,

In-treetops-Look-up!

We’re all song, no shame.

Call it happenstance, all

that mingles among limbs,

fogs of pollen,

entanglements even in air, These whims

come tickling the straits of your neck

like wisps of winter wheat. How

did we make it to Spring

through mare’s tails of wind,

to see, hear, anything 

before we felt it?

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.