Spider Hunter

Aju Mukhopadhyay

Tenuous yet tensile, spiders produce strong and elastic silk
Yet each arachnid species is loathsome like mite and tick
Think of the cobwebs spread over your head
If you enter a darkroom, unknown, forgotten and dead
Path obscured you would be confused, maybe entangled
Far from falling in love at first sight
We try to close our eyes
Try to kill them if they persist showing might  
We never wish them to remain with us
Unless to study on them we focus
Or enamored of them we try them to possess.

For millions of years 
More than 45000 species of spiders, mostly predators
Prey on unsuspecting live creatures
Caught in their complex net made out of liquid
Thrown into space from their gland
That quickly takes shape of minute silk thread  
Usually insects but giant wood spiders through their giant webs
Spread from branch to branch catch birds and lizards.
Mostly blind but sensitive and alert 
There is no quid pro quo in spider’s dealing with prey.
They dwell in all space, all types of habitats
Except on air, marine water and Antarctica
Almost ubiquitous they create excellent sensory wave
Master architect, infinitely patient
Remaining invisible day and night they wait
Jump upon a prey and quickly take it to their burrow
By mimicry they often catch ants from their den
Sometimes ambush an innocent prey
Camouflaging is a sweet way of catching unaware
Brightly coloured crab spider sits camouflaged on a flower
To catch a prey visiting it in an instant
They have unending preying ways, varied professional practices
They inject deadly venom to paralyse the victim at first.
Remember Tarantula the loathsome wooly wolf spider
And varieties of other obnoxious arachnids  
Which have been raining the earth
From millions of years before us
To remain who knows up to what eternal hours.

It was too simple for God
To create lamb and tiger using the same measuring rod
But He had enough plan in creating such a dark predator
Which spends all its time planning to kill and devour
But spider kills for its needs relying on its God gifted skill
Without an iota of malice or jealousy
There is no point of Irsha in killing its prey
A tiger isn’t jealous either while killing a doe forcibly
Living and killing are attributes of life and death;
Weapons of killing are in stock inside the living being
Ripus are inherent in them weapons they make with that faith.   

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Aju Mukhopadhyay is an award winning bilingual poet and author. His poems and stories have been widely anthologised and translated.