A black garden spider has spun her web near my back doorstep, just to the left of me as I write. She is a showy spider. Her body is a little more than one inch, with a third pair of legs about half as long as the other legs. We spend most evenings together. She keeps me company while I am living in this never-never land of coronavirus, that twilight place we are all suspended in while the virus dominates, requiring humans to spend more time alone.
Much has been written about the loneliness of the writer’s lot. The truth as I know it, in my experience, is that writing is not a lonely business. I write with my characters telling me stories and with the natural world all around me. There are days when the sky does high drama, a stiff wind, dark, scuddling clouds, pellets of rain. Today the sunset is a slender strip of magenta heat. Soon it will be time to check in with my spider-friend. Midday I find her web helter-skelter with holes and large gaps connected by fine threads, dangling. Silver strands, like my hair in the sunlight. She returns after dusk, after spending her day who-knows-where. Hours later, after the sky has turned dark, I find her web repaired and she sits in the center, awaiting. By dawn she will be gone. I wait for nightfall, for her return. One night she will go away and be gone forever, meanwhile I am tuned to her rhythm.
