A memory arises as if residual from a dream,

But no; a wakeful state.

Annie’s voice whispers the Hopi story just

as I watch the matriarch of the world crawl out

from the center stone in the labyrinth.

Grandmother spider, in Annie’s version,

moved through the underworlds before arriving

at the fourth, where the people reside today.

They say that she spun the world into being.

Grandmother spider, Father God, how many

spinnerets have you each?

Filaments, barely visible, surround us all.

One web is all encompassing to the single fly

Caught within.

But for those of us who weave our own webs,

following the patterns of Father and Grandmother,

we create a never-ending complex of

different, but forever connected strands.

I close my eyes.

The world beyond begins to blur

as new shapes come into view;

Dancing forms of old; dead and alive.

Movements punctuated by music, song and verse.

Memories flood.

And I remember that the web upon which we walk,

as we spin, is the one that God and spider walked before,

Bringing our stories into existence.