Ever after (on my 13th anniversary)

There is a golden orb spider who lives just outside my door.
Her web
trails, expansive, sticky and strong, gleaming like spun wire in the light
around plant-pots and lavender, door-frame and old shoes.

Unlike all the other orb spiders
(they are legion, here, in this strange autumn)
she doesn't hide in plants or on rafters
waiting to scurry out to wrap prey in filaments of gossamer
the better to keep for later.

This one
sits in the middle of her web
just above eye-height when the door is opened
her legs neatly extended, her body
with its tattoos of white and grey
in repose, mostly
unless delicately wrapping a bee, or consuming a mosquito
(of which she's caught a great number).
She appears never to startle. Our comings and goings
do not concern her, there is no retreat
no fear of us.

My daughters have decided
that she guards our house, brings
peacefulness to we inside the door.
They believe her to be special, she
so beautiful, so spare in her design
inscrutable,
arachnid,
ancient-of-days.

Once, I would have killed her. A witch-hunter of spiders, I
in my fear
my toe-curling anxiety of all small scuttling things
would never have suffered her to live.

Now, I see her as she is
a small jewel of life
a little beneficence at my door
and I wonder why I ever thought otherwise.

And today, well, today
it is 13 years since I was wed.
Perhaps our lady of the door-way has come to remind me
that there is no luck other than the luck we make,
there are no forevers other than those we choose,
and sometimes not then.
Sometimes it all passes so fleetly

as will she, this red-legged girl,
not long now until her time is done, as the summer
becomes a memory.

But what then is the ever after
except to say, I choose it
for however long the days
for however thin the web
I choose it. Now
and 13 years ago
this is what I choose
this person, this life

and how I have been blessed in this choosing.

- Kathy, 7/3/11