In the spider’s movement, I now recognize the evolutionary echo of the ‘web-foot’ of some ancient sea organism that moved by undulating a diaphanous membrane by which it was surrounded.

This ability allowed the creature not only to suspend itself (which was, in that medium, flight) but also to feel the water around it, perhaps in a way not unlike that provided by the web.

The spider, billions of lifetimes later, is still doing this, but in a new set of dimensions. It still flies, too, hanging there against the distance, in the center of a web, or following a strand across some unthinkable gulf.

You say it does not really fly or travel in the web? Allow me to suggest that what looks to us like incredible quietude is a mode of travel with which the spider is intimately familiar. Certain practitioners of profound stillness will immediately apprehend the direction of my gesture.

Hanging there in the sky, between you and the autumn moon, appearing in our vision and even this moment in our thoughts… you might even say that such a spider is visiting home, and not just in space… but in time.