Grandmother Spider lingered at the center of the room, lit by a golden orb.
Come closer, hija she said. Come. Ven Aqui.
She spoke the language of Borges and Cortásar and in my dream I froze,
unable to understand,
–
Come Closer Hija.
She said.
Ven. Ven Aqui.
So I went to the orb, the great ring of light Grandmother Spider sat round with all her eight long hairy limbs, and she held in her right palm (For she also had fingers and toes and feet and hands) a pair of scissors and a Daffodil, and in her left a Lily of the Nile and a red winged star.
Her web shimmered in the corners of the room and I felt the presence of
an old ache-to-know.

Ven. Look. See.
She said,
and she breathed a long spider breath that grew into green tendrils of smoke
and became an apple tree that bore fruit and died at dawn.

So I crept to the precipice and looked, wrapping my toes round the sharp edge of light and looked down down down till I saw a world draped in khadi and the shadows of a tired willow tree and three lone soldiers who wept for reasons not known to me and a child who made paper cranes on a mountain ten years south from here and somewhere it was raining too, big thick drops of rain that crashed and played on mossy rooftops and when silver trains rocked the valley twice

Sending out shoots of fog and steam
I blinked and turned away.
But the Spider bent and whispered in my ear
Look Closer.
So I crept to the precipice,
and looked over a mountain
Ten years south from here
Where a small girl lights a candle in a bamboo window
And a boy shreds his paper crane
and breaks three pencils at midnight
While three soldiers share warm coffee
Heated on a fire
that burns desultory at night.
Their thoughts are frayed
and beneath my eyes,
they are trembling.

Now.
Said the Spider,
high on her thrown of home spun thread
Now.
Said the Spider,
and her voice cracked in the rain.
Please tell me why they are weeping.