Ruth Williams

Motherhood

Overnight, the spider
on the wall of the garage below
birthed a bunch of babies. Upstairs,
I overhear a little girl see them, excited,
though the other little girl with her
intones, Now the mother will die.
She knows the score—one in,
another out. The real,
human mother with them, explains,
These baby spiders might live
their whole life in this garage,
enfolded in the web of the world they know
which is the world as far as they know it.
In the middle of my life, I envy
their limited perspective, a periscope
in which the most beautiful view
is magnified 1000x
so you can see the whiskers
on the spiders’ legs that feel a 1000x
what a human finger feels touching itself.
Dumb mammal I am,
I can’t tell if the human mother
speaks with awe
or if she pretends for the sake
of the children. One in,
another out, I lost you
and all of the world of you
which felt like the world
as far as I knew it. Oh,
how I wish I could call you now
to tell you this.

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Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and two chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press, 2019) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English at William Jewell College.