The Universe Within a Jar

I once ensnared a spider
in a web of my own design,
a clean, empty mason jar
residue of the label still clinging
to its rounded surface,
so that I could look upon him
as I pleased.
Fine hairs tinted him
black, white, orange.
his fangs moving in the way of
curious or anticipating fingers.

But by trapping him
I denied him the wastelands
of my driveway,
the sun of my garden or
a fate at the hands (wings?)
of the blue jays that, along
with the hum of a distant mower
textured my afternoons.

I denied him all
this, and (imagine my surprise)
he spun a galaxy of webbing
in the empty space of that jar.
I stared at the white hot
center of creation and
within the eons of my week, a constellation
of life burst forth
smearing the once empty
contours of the universe
with tiny pinpricks of darkness,
frenzied, inverted stars who
escaped through the airways to
live out a life at the mercy of the birds
that their mother,
crumpled and useless at the bottom of the jar,
had been denied.