Even to Cave-spiders

Do arthropods have ceilings?

Black Metal, Cy Twombly by artist Andrew McLeod

There are places on this planet where
the Sun doesn't rise for days.
Where people shuffle feet and shovel snow in the dark.
Imagine that.

Imagine greeting your neighbor at 3 a.m.
Imagine living in Alaska, or Svalbard, or Nunavut
and forgetting what it feels like
to be greeted by birdsong as you wake,
or how the Sun just hits different on a Sunday.

There are places where the Sun has never risen at all,
where a day has never passed and strange
see-through creatures are attached to the walls,
or the ceilings—do arthropods have ceilings?

I sometimes think about how a cave-spider… thinks.
About what it sees or thinks it sees, 
about if it’s some Lovecraftian fever dream, 
or just… reality, plainly seen
through those eight arachnid eyes, orbiting 
blackly, unblinking, 
as blind as anything
that sees, or thinks it sees.

There are places that are Mariana Trench deep,
un-kissed by solar rays, and long divorced
from heat or love. Content with leavings 
of milky flesh and blood-membraned scales drifting down.

Places so... Alien, 
like The Life Aquatic but with Xenomorphs
instead of Bill Murray.

But even there, on the edge of perceived reality, 
the Sun’s rays reach 
and gives—if nothing else—an outline 
to the darkness.

The darkest of which, to me it seems,
would be that of forgetting that you—some dust resynthesized—
remain a child of the Sun, and of Amaterasu,
and of Helios and of Khepri-Ra. 
That Great Big Radioactive Motherfucker in the Sky.

Still reaching downwards, still trying to light the black 
behind your eyes.
Still providing, even to cave-spiders, 
such as you and I.