Open the front door early to find
a tensile net spun overnight
from door edge to porch rail,
the spider in her weave
moving with the hinge
like another entry
to the filamentous world—
entangled quanta swarming,
hyphae knotting the threads
of earth, suns swinging
the tethered planets
all held, entwining—
the web breaks
in random passing,
the beloved passes
through a closing door
yet there is more
being opened, held open,
holding more—
there is a weaver
a loom of form and space
a strand between us,
luminous—
a net of grace
Marda Messick is a poet and retired Lutheran pastor living in Tallahassee, Florida on land that is the ancestral territory of the Apalachee Nation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Christian Century, Delmarva Review, and several other journals.