Arthropodophobe

April 23 2016

My brother’s fear of spiders

began in Cape Cod,

a tumble off a footbridge

into a thronging cast of crabs.

Who must have scuttled from the ditch, terrified.

Or were curious, perhaps,

poking and prodding with their clacking claws

like scavengers, drawn to meat.

A small black spider

has claimed the shower stall

as home.

He spins no web.

Magisterially rests,

either conserving strength

or in patient ambush, stalking prey.

And seems content

in perfect solitude,

as if the sterile moonscape

of this smooth white surface

were his natural habitat.

He scurries, confused

keeping just above the water-line.

Even though his hard black body

seems impervious,

kicking unsinkably to the edge,

sticking to the sheer plastic wall

on 8 spindly legs.

I enjoy his company,

admiring the beauty

of function and form,

the certainty, and purpose

of a circumscribed life.

A gentle creature

who amiably serves,

gulping insects

trapping flies.

I know my brother would be terrified.

But I feel a kinship

with this innocent creature

and happily co-exist;

leaving him keeping watch,

and feeling oddly pleased

when I find him still here.

I understand my brother’s fear. And it makes sense:  spiders and crabs both belong to the phylum arthropod, and even to the non-naturalist the similarity is clear.

My fondness for these small scurrying creatures is far less explicable. But I think the poem gets close to it. I see them not only as harmless, but as helpful. And I have a grudging admiration for their functional beauty, for their mastery and patience and magisterial solitude.

The official collective noun for crabs is apparently “cast”. But in the 4^th line, I first went with “congregation”, and then throng:  not only does it work sonically (resonating with Cod, off, prodding, claws, and drawn), but it has fewer distracting connotations than “cast”. And it also seeming more active; I suppose because as you sound it out, it immediately calls up the verb.

I vacillated between “it” and he/his/him:  the former more pedantically correct, but the latter much more effective. I think this is because the spider here has to be anthropomorphized and personalized; “it” automatically creates a kind of academic distance that works against the basic premise of the piece.

The title is pure fun. While I could have gone with an actual word – arachnophobia – I wanted to get “arthropod” in there, since this is the word that effectively links spiders and crabs, and so helps the reader make sense. Which left me playing around with “phylum” and “philia” and “phobia”:  in the end, the neologism arthropodophobe was clearly the most fun. I can’t imagine a reader seeing that title in a table of contents and not wanting to immediately turn to it!