Robert Wrigley


How Enormous


I never saw the spider that bit me
on the heel of my left palm,
its sting no worse than a bee’s.

But soon a tiny fluid-filled ulceration rose
that in a minute more was surrounded
by an inflamed, roseate corona.

Interesting to think about it,
being alone and feeling electric rushes
tunnel up into the cup of my palm

then shimmer and diminish in my fingers.
A wipe of isopropyl with a cotton swab,
a smear of antibiotic ointment,

and a pour of good rye whiskey.
Stars coming on, a six mile hike
back to the truck. What else was there to do?

We forget how enormous we are
even when the sky reminds us we’re tiny.
I wonder, after the spider bit,

if it still clung to the stick of firewood
I tossed into the fire, and if it perished there.
Later, standing at the edge of camp,

I felt the world tilt. Something came close
and a chill rose up in me
that had to do with the spider too—

it was immense, heedless, everywhere,
no awareness whatsoever of me.
Probably nothing more than the dark.

Robert Wrigley’s most recent book is Box (Penguin, 2017). A collection of essays, mostly on poetry, Nemerov’s Door, was published in April, 2021, by Tupelo Press, and a  new book of poems, The True Account of Myself as a Bird, will appear, from Penguin, in 2022. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Idaho, he lives in the woods of northern Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2021