I found this spiderweb in the grass outside my apartment one morning at the end of last month.

If you look at it up close, it’s such a delicate, intricate little construction. It obviously reflects a great deal of work and skill in its construction. Coated with dew, it looks like a snug, almost magical little home.

The next day, the lawn mower ran over it and it was gone.

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

“A noiseless patient spider” — Walt Whitman

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