AT YOUR FUNERAL I REMEMBER A TARANTULA

 

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The tarantula’s legs worked like fingers 

drumming the blacktop, hair-cloaked,

knuckling across the no passing lane.

You sat in the car wondering what I had  

to prove on an empty highway in summer.

I didn’t think that far ahead, certainly

not to this frankincense and myrrh, the censer

clanking on its chain. When blocking the highway, 

the tarantula tilted back on its legs to strike. 

If I moved to the left, it hurried 

towards the shoulder of yarrow and black

eyed Susans. The school biology class kept

a tarantula in an aquarium, Igor on a strip

of masking tape. As lab assistant you opened the lid. 

Igor crawled up your wrist, circling your forearm

and back down to your open hand. Ninth graders

found it safer to tap the glass with their fingertips,

to show themselves by dropping crickets 

between the rocks and cactus spines. Today,

a rosary is wound through your fist, 

but there’s nothing left for us to prove. 

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BIO:

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Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.

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