The Spider in the Sink - Sept 17 2026

 

The Spider in the Sink

Sept 17 2026

The spider in the sink

is like a marooned man

who somehow survives

on some godforsaken island

all alone.

No food, no web

no way out,

just a bleak terrain of hard white porcelain

and the weight of time.

I’m struck

by how dignified it looks,

planted there, utterly still.

As self-contained

as the wise man on the mountaintop,

sitting cross-legged

and serenely content

gazing out from his ascetic perch.

But, as spiders always are

on high alert.

How did it get there, fully grown?

They once believed

that life begins spontaneously;

that the flies buzzing around the excrement 

arose from it,

as if a restless God

hadn't stopped creating the world

on the 7th day.

And why does it remain

in this barren wasteland,

an ambush predator

where there is no prey?

So still 

and unnaturally calm

it seems as patient as Job.

Even contemplative,

as if meditating 

on the deeper questions

that dog us all,

as if spiders had an inner life

richer than we thought.

I open the faucet,

and from a dead start

8 delicate legs

unleash like loaded springs

as it scurries to higher ground.

High tide

has submerged the island,

a Biblical flood

threatens to cleanse 

its desolate world.

An innocent spider

caught by circumstance.

So I cup it gently in my hand

and ferry it to safety

in a dusty corner of the room.

Because all life is precious,

and this creature is as deserving

as any other. 

Because there’s a nobility

to this harmless spider

I can’t help but admire.

And because I am no almighty God,

sitting in judgement 

and careless with his power.

I seem to repeatedly find new spiders in the sink. How they keep getting there and why, I have no idea.

But I am always struck by how dignified and self-contained they look. How patient and meditative, as if the inner lives of spiders were richer than we think. 

I’ve always had a fondness for harmless spiders:  the good they do; their extraordinary silk; the brilliant webs they spin. I suspect I identify with their solitary nature. 

So I feel supremely guilty if I run the water and ignore them:  as if they were dispensable, didn’t matter, felt nothing. As if life wasn’t precious; and not just the intelligent life we tend to privilege. (Actually, hardly even that. We eat pigs, after all. Never mind how we treat our fellow humans!) 

I can’t help but imagine changing places: as if some higher power or more advanced intelligence were to incidentally glance down, only to let me figuratively wash down the drain before turning back to some minor chore. Doesn’t life often seem that way? Instead of a paternal God who lovingly watches over us, an indifferent God who is careless with his power. (I prefer no God, but for the sake of a poem will happily betray my disbelief!)