Sir Twitch

(thanks to Karl Swedberg and englishrules.com)
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WERE reincarnation
true, I would
have been a SPIDER
in a former life,
so deep and so negative is my affinity with them.

I've said before how the sight of one evokes in me a taste of flies -- and how nothing but scale seems to protect my life from their oversized hunger.

So... are they just Darwinism with all the atheist curlicues removed? Very blunt spoken creatures they are.

I have a rule that prevents me from either killing one or touching one -- except perhaps the former by an accident I may not always be sufficiently careful to prevent. This week there was an orange beauty -- carrying a tortoise shell tint like the one on the curved tines of a lady's comb -- blocking with its slanted web all access to the dog's hutch. This should have been prime real estate for such as him, given that it is home to hundreds of flies. But each day the monster looked more disconsolate -- and I didn't see any paralyzed bags hanging there either, though on the other hand, why would he have wanted to show them off to me especially? In any case, I began to wonder if he might be dead (in which case, I could enter and clean up).

Blowing on the web was oddly unproductive. Sleepy, are we? Finally, one hideous back leg twitched and swung. Was I happy to see signs of life? Good Lord, not at all really!

I kept on. No doubt what I wanted to see die was the affinity. Today the web has deflated. It is there but lacks buoyancy or sweep. And the flies continue to fly around and over and they seem to pierce and pass through.

And as for me I didn't like the life of it but I hate the death of it. I think I would revive it if I could, just as I am not a bit sorry that I can't.

We will
CALL you
sweet Sir TWITCH.

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