Dew Drops on a Spider's Web - Kay Stewart Photography

This spider’s web,covered with early morning dew – a natural miracle nearly invisible to the naked eye – was in the corner of a flower box on our deck. Kay, whose camera is always nosing around for the things we do not see, took this photograph. The poem was inspired by the smallness I felt – the beauty of smallness – seen in the magnificence if a spider’s web in morning light and in e. e. cummings’ poem “who are you, little i”.

“A Lightness of Being” – Gordon C. Stewart, Kay Stewart Photography

who are you, little i, sitting above the world so high (e. e. cummins)

on the high perch of the home hammers and saws have made

on land filled and leveled by bulldozers and gas-guzzling graders

then i see it in the morning sun

the all-but-imperceptible home spun from inside a spider self, wet

with drops strung like beads so small, so delicate, so light

they leave the spider’s home intact, a natural grace respecting strength

and weakness – a lightness of being that does not crush or break

this hidden part – this most amazing part – of a larger Web of life we barely see