KAMAU'S SPIDER

A curious lens dares to
Encapsulate elusive Anansi
Entwining his fate
With CowPastor’s
Swaying grass
Banshee wind
And the sweetest dunks on earth

Spinning glistening silver delicacies

Into a silver thread of hope
For the poet
With the ascetic brown face
Weary with the ways of the world

Spinning your strong delicacies of lore…

About spirit elders
Hardy with the clamoring, clanking pain
Of the Middle Passage
Now beseeching us
To respect their peace
Their blood journey
Not end in crystalline coral
And fecund earth,
But continual travel
Throughout these dumb ventricles
Of our very core

Still Anansi spins delicacies of the discovery…

 Made by the poet
Meaning to capture
Elusive Anansi
With his camera,
But instead
The sly spider
Made a mockery of Kodak
As he left behind immortalized on celluloid
Not his likeness
But a dark haunted face,

Full mouth slack with anguish
Left eye lolling aimlessly
Right window burning with
Blinding concentric circles of light
And raising only gooseflesh and
Unanswered questions

Spin Anansi spin…

Your silvery secrets passed
From one arachnid generation
To the next
And the shroud of each one’s destiny
Carefully coiled within.