Horses, Spiders, Flies and Death

stanley · Post by **stanley** » 16 Nov 2015, 23:06

Horses, Spiders, Flies and Death

What a spider thinks , or a horse?
About death?
For flies, at least, a spider is death.
The problem with horses, of course, is
that free of a rider
and stuffed with oatmeal and grass to digest,
A horse will pass not only gas but also for the most placid kind of beast,
One disinclined to muse any mortal theme,
and so would seem, I suggest, easily dismissed as a serious thinker.

But if idleness be too close to crime,
and 'twere idleness to tinker over long with absurdities so deep rendered in rhyme,
then let us keep to a virtuous path leading on to prompter conclusion
and sum it up to say of the mind of the spider
that she's disinclined to let it wander to ponder themes too far beyond her
and so to the death of flies
has only to guide her
vibrations along ephemeral filaments of her own careful extrusion.

aparsons · Post by **aparsons** » 15 Feb 2016, 20:46

Thank you for sharing with us! This is really interesting to me, I always seem drawn to thinking about things from something else's point of view. What was your inspiration?

stanley · Post by **stanley** » 16 Feb 2016, 21:47

aparsons wrote:Thank you for sharing with us! This is really interesting to me, I always seem drawn to thinking about things from something else's point of view. What was your inspiration?

Thanks for reading. I must confess that my motive for writing was more a self indulgence in rhyme and rhythm than a serious attempt at portraying animal consciousness. From somewhere the title popped into my head and I just took it from there, following a chain of associations and jumping on comic opportunities, for what I hoped would be a piece of verse that might amuse someone besides me. It's strange, but at about the same time I attempted another poem, "Fence", that was a more serious treatment of the mystery of animal consciousness. Somehow in my mind I link these two very different attempts as sort of related. If you'd like to read "Fence", it's posted on the poetry forum. If you write, also, I'd like to read something of yours.