Because it is spring yet has snowed nonstop for two days,
and because the room is warmed
from the baseboard heaters and the gas fireplace,
and because it is a wet snow that pools in the ruts
of our driveway and at the sills of our windows,
a large brown house spider decides to cross our living room,
each of its legs lifting singularly like a tiny torture,
fierce as a Bourgeois sculpture, who was
eighty when she began her dark decent
