I was looking at the photos on my daughter Maggie’s phone and came across this spider. She had taken the photo on a nature walk along the bayou with her children while attending a birthday party. It is commonly known as a banana spider. Can you see its web? I featured a golden orb weaver in my yet-to-be-published book Swamp Song. I wrote the poem as a golden shovel for the golden orb weaver.
A golden shovel is a poem that uses the text of a line from another poem or text. Align the words of the quote down the right hand margin. Use these words to create a poem written around the words of the quote. The poem may or may not be of the same topic of the quote.
Today you can choose to find a quote you like to write about in a golden shovel or write your own ekphrastic poem about the photo. Please post your poems in the comments and give encouraging feedback to other writers.
“Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space”
A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
Golden threads surrounded
her throne, detached
from her banana-abdomen, woven in
curious ways, measureless
vibrations like waves of oceans
swallowing flying insects of
space.
Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
Reflections on the Teche 
As I generally do I write from the picture first then go back and read your thoughts, Margaret. Golden Shovels are wonderful and yours is a fine example. Maybe I will try later if I have time. I do not know banana spiders, but I love seeing the dew-covered webs that hide in the sunlight. So perfectly formed. Symmetry and nature. Metaphors for living if we think about it. So this came to me because of the photo and my memories of seeing some lovely webs on misty mornings. Can’t wait for your Swamp Songs I know I will learn a lot, Margaret.
Web ‘n Art Lessons
Spin spin spin
your job and no one had
to teach you how…
patience, determination
weaving your web
for food
for survival
so many ways to live a life.
@ draft
Janet Clare F.
Love this image of the hard worker with patience and determination – a beautiful model for us in the spinning world!
So many ways to live a life is a good line to ponder. Nature has fascinating ways of surviving.
I love the idea of spin lessons and this really smart spider.
What a gorgeous photo and delicate, beautiful golden shovel, Margaret!
SPIDER RECYLING
Little golden one
catches onto the dead leaf,
ready to fall into passersby steps –
instead given new life,
a foundation ever-delicate
for spider’s tender, shimmering
web.
Draft, Carol Coven Grannick
Love ever-delicate. If you see these spiders in real life, they are the size of your thumb. Not so itsy bitsy.
Yikes!
If spiders spin webs
it is September.
Though summer days
drip slower
a breeze has stirred
the dry leaves
to a rattling.
Lean days are coming.
Harvest what you can.
Pull cast nets in
and feast on sunshine
while you can.
Thanks for the reminder that summer is slowing leaving into fall. This time can take so long. “Harvest what you can.” The only thing I’ll miss are the longer days.