Spiders need no excuse.
Copyright 2009, Terry Turner
Powerful large hands, deeply marked with white scars won in brutal tasks, tenderly held a small drying yellow leaf. Upon the leaf a very tiny almost translucent green spider busily spun songs in its own miniature universe. The man studied the tiny spider and, bit by bit, his hands began to relax as he recalled an almost forgotten world.
Those powerful hands changed their aspect, the taunt sinews mellowed, the powerful muscles relaxed, the constant readiness drained away and, as the planes of his hands softened, you could see that once upon a time those same hardened hands had touched love, had expressed tenderness, otherwise they could not have so tenderly held the universe of the deaf spider.
At that moment, had the man of the hands chosen to speak, tears would have been in his roughened voice.
Carefully he placed the leaf into a large crevice in the stone wall, a safe harbor for the spinning spider. Rising from the stone cold floor, he drove the now unfamiliar soft feelings from his heart and began to gird himself in preparation for the march to the arena; a stone pen surmounted by indifferent witnesses to the bloody combats which followed there one after another, endless, without season, without reason.
Survivor of two hundred and twelve combats, will his hands recall tenderness tomorrow?
Red is the color of blood, and of fire, and of steel, and of iron; do we not know their colors too well?
The spider may spin without knowing what we do; but we have no such excuse.
The gladiator without choice may perish or may live.
The witnesses have chosen.
The spider spins.
Round and round.
And we round
And round
Copyright 2009, Terry Turner
Powerful large hands, deeply marked with white scars won in brutal tasks, tenderly held a small drying yellow leaf. Upon the leaf a very tiny almost translucent green spider busily spun songs in its own miniature universe. The man studied the tiny spider and, bit by bit, his hands began to relax as he recalled an almost forgotten world.
Those powerful hands changed their aspect, the taunt sinews mellowed, the powerful muscles relaxed, the constant readiness drained away and, as the planes of his hands softened, you could see that once upon a time those same hardened hands had touched love, had expressed tenderness, otherwise they could not have so tenderly held the universe of the deaf spider.
At that moment, had the man of the hands chosen to speak, tears would have been in his roughened voice.
Carefully he placed the leaf into a large crevice in the stone wall, a safe harbor for the spinning spider. Rising from the stone cold floor, he drove the now unfamiliar soft feelings from his heart and began to gird himself in preparation for the march to the arena; a stone pen surmounted by indifferent witnesses to the bloody combats which followed there one after another, endless, without season, without reason.
Survivor of two hundred and twelve combats, will his hands recall tenderness tomorrow?
Red is the color of blood, and of fire, and of steel, and of iron; do we not know their colors too well?
The spider may spin without knowing what we do; but we have no such excuse.
The gladiator without choice may perish or may live.
The witnesses have chosen.
The spider spins.
Round and round.
And we round
And round
And round
Again.
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