If I were in a book it would be the book
in which some lesser angel bemoans
the state of my soul

and is comforted for it
and is corrected for it

by some greater angel who knows
as the reader knows that it is not my soul
that suffers the indignities of ignobility: 
the inability to curb the petty smallness
of spirit, ungladness in the company
of fools, anger's decay,

in the sense that my soul itself cannot be
harmed nor tarnished though it can witness
my sorrow on finding that illness alters me
from the self I thought I'd more or less known. 

What can one do about one's nature?
I look at the spider that's finally 
restrung its great wheel away from the door.

I’d like to close the door awhile
leaving the spider be.
I’d like to preclude the possibility
of angel, as of prey.