Will Walker

Will Walker lives in San Francisco with his wife and their dog. He has published two collections of poetry: Wednesday after Lunch and Zeus at Twilight. He is a former editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. His poetry is also included in two recent anthologies: Fog and Light and Pandemic Puzzle Poems.

No Commercial Value

I stop to admire two spiderwebs, laden
with enough dew to light them in the morning shade.
Nature’s neon, each drop a bright city light
that says Ahoy, old urbanite, interrupt

your self-absorbed meander through the neighborhood,
avert your eyes from sidewalk and blue sky,
parked cars and that passing bus.
Stop here and marvel at this handiwork,

so vulnerable till it dries into near-invisibility,
hanging now like wet laundry on the line,
web shreds pendulous, illustrating
the exacting pull of gravity.

And the motionless arachnids, assassin-farmers
of the insect world, eight-legged uglies
poised mid-web for whatever flies by.
You couldn’t pay me enough to spin

this subtle a web—and yet the spiders do it
again and again, their only strategy,
and a fruitful one, to judge by these two
big mamas hanging on neighboring plants.

In a perfect world these webs
would draw a crowd—
awed humans worshiping
at the altar of this alien intelligence 

drawing nurture from flies,
spinning silk to catch the dew,
waiting motionless and deadly
for their next unscheduled kill.

Now Mostly Good

Grand plans today: none.
Standing, perhaps, at the top of the stairs.
A long climb.
Looking back: so many years.
Now celebrating.
Anniversary 25.
Yet inclined to celebrate all days
above ground, now mostly good.
Except for the aches and pains.
Today, that’s what I celebrate.
My body says At your service.
My mind kvells to remember
to gas up the car for a drive,
to spell at least a few thousand
of the words that stand for chair
and cup and table, air and wind
and sea and sky. And our dog
seems unaware of time.
He awaits his morning walk.
Let him wait. What else
has he got to do? Patrol
the neighborhood of course,
mark the usual block,
scavenge intently for anything
resembling a snack.
He’ll be surprised when we hop
into the car and head south,
and yet he’ll move beyond surprise
so quickly we’ll need
to catch up for an hour
as he moves into expedition mode
and anxiously surveys
the traffic, the trees, the land,
hops from back seat to front,
sniffs the cool breeze
emanating from the air-conditioning,
monitors a whole world
so much like the usual,
and yet fresh and clean,
a mystery he’ll translate
to his daily search
for dominance and comfort.
We, too, I suppose, seek
much the same.
Safe travels. And new landscape.
A place we can’t call home.
A reason to sit up
and look around.