Ron McFarland: "Arachnophilia"

Arachnophilia
 
Miss Muffett, my wife opines, was no fool,
and if, as some scientists now say,
spiders dream, their much-loved nightmares
surely would frighten Georgia away.
 
Last night I dabbed pricey Clobetasol
to nine bites about her body: lower back,
inside left elbow, nape of her sweet neck,
six tiny blisters on her right forearm,
 
perhaps the sequential nips of a single
irked arachnid in search of some more suitable
nourishment—a common housefly, moth, or bee.
Why do they find Georgia so delectable?
 
Both of us had spent the past four days
scraping and painting our resurrected deck,
nurturing dreams of evening parties, wine,
soft music, occasionally enlightened talk,
 
not dreaming of whatever dark hunger drives
some spiders to dream of juicy human flesh.
And why, if these noiseless, patient spiders must
feast at times on the human beast, why not on me?

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Ron McFarland lives & writes in Moscow, Idaho. He's an emeritus professor of English at the University of Idaho, where he taught nearly 50 years. He also served a 2-year term as the state's first writer-in-residence in the mid 1980s. His most recent books are Professor McFarland in Reel Time: Poems & Prose of an Angler (2020) and Gary Soto: A Career in Poetry and Prose (2022).