^{El Retiro, Colombia}

When I step naked into my shower,
I find, staring down at me,
its eight dark eyes peering over
the silver lip of the sprayer, a tarantula
the size of a bar of soap.

There’s a reason we tap out our shoes,
check behind pillows every night
before bed. Spiders and scorpions make
a daily pilgrimage of this house, through
windows and doors, to and from the jungle
that presses in on us from all sides.

How many have I displaced, or killed,
I wonder, looking up, surprised by this creature,
each of us weighing options: four pairs of legs
leaping into the falls and down the bluff
of my body. Or two, scrambling out
into the cold to fetch a broom.

And I think, not  my shower today, but  ours.

“You stay up there and look,” I hear myself say,
and with this a small peace forms between us.
My hands lather and scrub. The brown voyeur
drums one hairy finger just at the edge
of the cascade—that thin wet line
between  curious  and  afraid, where each of us
must make a home.

^{i.m. Paula Merwin}

All this time, I felt like I had to describe 
the things I did, and what was done to me,
how I had to wander a strange world for years, 
needing to be busy, sleeping in strange beds, 
searching through cities for chapels to weep in, 
learning the stitches that keep a ripped heart 
together for a while, when what I really need 
to say is that it rained all night and morning, 
and the drops were a percussion on the trees,
and after the sun rose, I saw an insect land on the railing 
and take shelter, and a bird drank from a leaf. 
Wild pigs exploded from the bushes where they’d hid,
and the sage in the bowl smelt of memory and musk.
A toad sat—still as any god—on the wet stone.