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

who are you, little i, sitting above

the world so high (e. e. cummins)

on the high perch 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