The Spider’s Gospel

The Spider’s Gospel

The fog this morning is a kind of thinking
with the body. White space between
known things, like this spider’s web
I almost walked through, trembling
with dew, each drop a lens refracting
what’s left of last night’s grief.

You know how we imagine comfort
falling, a grace that descends upon us.

As if we weren’t already
swimming in it, this soup of almost-
invisible threads.

Yet we never see how morning builds
its own temples from broken things,
this eight-legged priest weaving light
from yesterday’s abandoned plans.

I touch one strand, and the whole web shivers.
Is this not also prayer?

What the spider knows—emptiness
is structure too. Each morning
she begins again, spinning theories
of survival from her own body.

I watch her work the fog
into silver, into scaffold,
into a net for catching light.

Last week, I wanted to ask my mother
about sustainable grief.
I think of this web’s tensile strength,
how it cradles dew without drinking it,
how the spider’s hunger
makes architecture possible.

Some mornings, I too must weave
my own consolation from thin air.

See how the spider repairs her tears
with patience, how she transforms
absence into geometry, into trap,
into crown.

Some days we must steal
our comfort from where we find it.

-by April Pagaling

-Stafford Challenge 2025