Blood Red

I was digging up our winter crop
of crimson clover
turning it over to enrich
the coming corn
when the tiniest red spider
—a clover mite—
ran frantic across my arm.
I told it that I meant no harm
as if it could believe
what must be lies
from an enormous, hungry vertebrate.
With just a month
from hatching till it dies
it hurried off to hunt a mate.

After sunset, above the corn I planted,
an enormous arachnid
hung in the summer sky.
Scorpio!
(As the story goes
after it stung Orion
they were set apart,
the Hunter to dominate winter,
his tormentor
rising at the end of spring.)
Antares, the red giant,
that summer constellation’s beating heart,
could swallow the solar system
out to Mars.
Young for a star
it likely will explode
in just another million years.

The night was clear
and spurred me to reflect
on being a mere speck
in a vast and ancient galaxy.
In size and longevity
halfway between an insect and
a star—yet am I not connected
to crimson blossoms, scarlet spiders,
and that far vermilion sun?
Don’t I run blood red inside?