Tarantula

In Cachagua before a rain, tarantulas cross the dusty roads

toward the creek bed

and disappear under trailers and sycamore trees.

When the rain comes, the arroyo fills like a garden hose

and flushes summer down the mountains and out to sea,

and what every school boy wonders is this:

do the big spiders ever drown?

In Bend, the first rain washes pine pollen down the streets

in yellow streaks the color of wet sulfur.

It dries in paisley patterns

curlicued around coffee cups

and knapweed flower heads.

In the river that is never dry, silt is unstuck

and shrouds the logs

stranded

beneath the water at the foot of the ghosts of saw mills.

Once, I was caught out in a windstorm east of Dayville.

Miles from the road, I hid under a living fir tree and watched three dead ones

teetering

near the spot where I had stood minutes before

to plant a small orange flag.

I had the urge to run to the flag and listen to the snags creaking in the blast

like a spider running toward the river

like a mother grouse flying at danger

like a curious bear cub running from its mother

then one fell and buried the flag.

I think, yes, I did once see a drowned tarantula,

its wet black body like a hairy starfish in the high flood mark of Cachagua creek.

I wonder how it got past the snapping dogs and BB guns of the trailer park

and whether it was moving toward something

Or away.