Instead of gratitude for being noticed,
there are days when the world gets tired
of all this applause and dissection
and tries to hide.
Like us all, now and then the world wants privacy, not
this woman stalking it with a pen, commenting on
every item in the world’s blue-green basket:
Skunks and pineapples,
Blizzards and espresso,
Another pineapple,
Chalk drawings, tennis balls, thatched roofs.
And here’s the trouble with anthropomorphizing everything—
Now I feel sorry for it,
as it scurries away,
like the spider I disturbed in the flowers this morning
startled and on the run, me hurrying to catch it.
And the spider has no idea
whether I will crush it or cradle it gently to a new home
now that it’s captured my attention.
The world says to the spider, I know just how you feel.
