花が咲く
アジサイ、蜘蛛も
青いだな
Hana ga saku
Ajisai, kumo mo
Aoi da na
"Oops." Oz is out in the backyard trimming my overgrown hydrangea. I never cut it back last fall and puffy, brown heads of dead flowers poke out beyond this year's new growth. The hydrangea looks even more like some botanical mutant than usual.
"What happened?" I walk over to the screen door to check and make sure he didn't prune his finger off or anything.
"I cut off a flower. Oh well. It was bound to happen."
"Bring it to me. I can put it in a vase."
He reaches into the pile of dead twigs and ratty flower heads and pulls out a green-leafed stalk with a small puff of flowers at the end. The flowers aren't fully formed: some are half-unfolded and green, some are butter-colored, only the flowers on the edge of the cluster are wide and blue. Taking it into the kitchen, I pull the lower leaves off the stalk and shake it over the sink. A spider falls from the leaves and tries to run up the side of the sink, but it's too slick and he slides back two inches for every inch he climbs. At a blast of water from yours truly, he rolls into the drain basket with the bits of parsley and a few stray noodles, and maybe on down the drain, but I can't tell. I drop the flower into a vase and fill it with water.
Later, when I go back into the kitchen for a glass of water, I see that the spider has escaped the sink and set up a temporary residence suspended between my soap dispensers. Hanging in midair and lit from above by a fluorescent work light, he is far prettier than he was in the sink. The light picks up touches of gold on his translucent green legs and his abdomen is chased with black and gold stripes, like cloisonnéoo delicate to have been made by any entity less dexterous than nature. Anything that pretty has to be poisonous, I think, and he's surely pissed.
He's still there, last I checked.
359 words | May 30, 2004 08:06 PM | Real true story