The Spider's Secret

A poem accompanied by a picture that I took. Enjoy and please let me know what you think.

Translucent web drapes down, haunted with
Secrets of distant past. Here the spiders used to tread
With their fingers of silk spinning wonders of dreams.
Freeing themselves from our world of dread.

I saw him once, with his menacing eyes and his
Eight long legs crawling towards me. A hard shoe put an end
To his carefree life, and his blood seeped into the dry soil.
Still his eyes locked onto my soul, like those of a friend.

And now I see his kind’s art; beautiful, delicate. Enough to make
Me wonder if it was this was the very web. The web that he had spun
While he was still alive. I can remember the blood seeping into the ground,
So helpless. So careless I had been. But when all’s said and done...

His secret will never be known, hidden deep within the silken web,
I should never had treated him that way. We have no right to mess around
With their secrets. Like the keys to doors. If the door is not ours,
We shouldn’t look for the key. Because it shouldn’t be found.

First? This picture is really cool. Now on the actual poem, I thought this was pretty good as well. I've never really minded spiders and thought webs were pretty, so I like how you referred to it as "art." My one real problem comes when you full-out say "We human should leave nature alone." Commands like that, to me, just sound preachy. But then I also like some of the images you portray. So, I'm iffy on the poem but the picture's awesome.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver

Alrighty, I am not sure I agree with the idea the poem portrays but it does flow very nicely. It has resonating quality that I like. (Read it twice because of this.) It also made me stop and think about all the spiders I have squashed... nope I really do not feel bad about squishing them. (So long as they are outside I let them be. I live in a barn *living quarters* full of spiders of all variates. For the most part we get along provided they do not crawl directly on me. Oh... and just so everyone knows I believe spiders understand English because I talk to them and they seem to understand me.)

Favorite part:

Translucent web drapes down, haunted with
Secrets of distant past.

As for the picture, I love it! Well done!

Keep Writing (and snapping pictures),
~FW~

K, the picture is beautiful, and the poem is quite well written. I'll give you a quick review!

Crimsona wrote:
Translucent web drapes down, haunted with
Secrets of distant past. Here the spiders used to tread
With their fingers of silk spinning wonders of dreams.
Freeing themselves from our world of dread. This is absolutely gorgeous! My favorite stanza!

I saw him once, with their menacing eyes and their OK, so this stanza we run into some problems: 'him' implies one spider, then you say 'their'. 'Him' doesn't have 'their' eyes. It would be "I saw him once, with his menacing eyes, his eight long legs crawling towards me." OR, 'him' would have to be changed to 'them'...
Eight long legs crawling towards me. A hard shoe put an end
To his carefree life, and his blood seeped into the dry
Soil. Still his eyes locked onto my soul, like those of a friend. I don't like how you have 'soil' in the beginning of this line. I'd prefer it in the end of the previous. You sorta lose some imagery here, in this second stanza, but it's still good!

And now I see his kind’s art; beautiful, delicate. Enough to make Take out the 'and' in the beginning. and 'kind's' should be changed to " his kinds' "
Me wonder if it was this was the very web. The web that he had spun OK, read "Me wonder if it was this was the very web." Doesn't make sense right? You need to reword it. Probably was just a common typo. "Me wonder if this was his very own web." is an example of a rewording.
While he was still alive. I can remember the blood seeping into the ground,
So helpless. So careless I had been. But when all’s said and done...

His secret will never be known, hidden deep within the silken web,
I should never had treated him that way. We have no right to mess around K, you seem to have 'had' and 'have' in the wrong places. Give 'em a doce'-do, no?
With their secrets. Like the keys to doors. If the door is not ours,
We shouldn’t look for the key. Because it shouldn’t be found. Nice ending! While I don't exactly agree with what you're saying here, I like how it was written. "I should never have treated him that way" is a little boring though; maybe spice it up instead of stating your regret. Describe your feelings about being regretful instead, perhaps.

K, so I quite liked this because it's just...pretty. I think you could work on spicing up the imagery in some places, (I saw what you can do in stanza one! *evil snicker*)but really, I think it's nice. I rather disagree with the message (sorry!) but I like that you give your point of view so tastefully.

Oooh! Your picture is lovely! I love how it accompanies your poem... you are quite an amazing photographer! Also, usually I don't like to comment on age, especially with relationship with your writing since sometimes people can be insulted, but I seriously thought you were much older by the sound of your poem... your voice is very nicely developed and it sounds very mature! I can scarcely believe you're 13! Anyway, it's a very good thing... I can't wait to see you when you improve!

Now, about the poem... I love how described the spider's web and the spider's death and then your wonder whether you killed the artist of the web. It makes it a bit tragic, and that's lovely.

Now, some things that you might want to do to perhaps improve your poem? Don't refer to the spiders as "they" and instead choose a gender (he or she, it doesn't matter). That way, you can make a lovely parallelism between the spider that you killed and the builder on the web. By making it singular as opposed to plural, you specifically refer to the spider that built the web as the spider you killed. By making it plural instead, it seems more like it's just one of a billion... and the way that your poem is set up right now, I think the singular tense would be more powerful. If you're set on making it plural, make it less of a tragedy that the spider is killed and make it more hopeful... though one is dead, the web continues on. That sort of thing. But again, that's not the intention I think you're aiming for.

As far as your last stanza, I think it is a bit on the preachy side... but it only seems that because you don't really address secrets before (well, you kind of, but you don't really explain how it's a secret so it seems to be a bit of a throw-away description) and then suddenly BAM. You start talking about how we shouldn't get into secrets. So! Either you need to talk about secrets more and don't just toss the idea out there and then get back to it at the very end, or you need to dwell into what makes it secret. Personally? I like the second idea. But do whatever you think will help!

Best of luck!

A translucent web drapes down, haunted with
Secrets of a distant past.
Here the spiders used to tread

Freeing themselves from our world of dread.

I like this line

Eight long legs crawling towards me.
A hard shoe put an end
To his carefree life, and his blood
Seeped into the dry soil.
Still his eyes locked onto my soul, like those of a friend.

Just added some breaks. And the last line is chilling....

And now I see his kind’s art; beautiful, delicate.
Enough to make me wonder if
it was this very web.
The web that he had spun while he was still alive.
I can remember the blood seeping into the ground,
So helpless. So careless I had been.
But when all’s said and done...

The last lines don't make much sense. Is the person despairing about the spider that they killed?? (And I added some breaks).

I should never had treated him that way.
We have no right to mess around
With their secrets.
Like the keys to doors. If the door is not ours,
We shouldn’t look for the key.
Because it shouldn’t be found.

The last line is a little odd here. Not a very good ending, I think. Try something more final?

All in all this poem was kind of vague. I thought it was about a spider's web but I guess not now that I've finished reading it... *Shrugs* Try to make it more clear, maybe?
But, although it wasn't very clear your sentences were very nice. They went well with the poem and were delicate and fragile, but clear and beautiful.

Keep writing,
Alzora

I love it. I love the meaning behind it. The imagdry was astonishing to say the least. I have never thought about it like that and now I'll probably rememeber this before I do!

Hello there. First of all, that's a really nice title. The picture is nice too and looks cool, especially the web covering that opening. The openings a little too big though so it didn't feel really secretive for me.

Nitpicks:

Here the spiders used to tread

- I think there should be a comma after 'Here'.

With their fingers of silk spinning wonders of dreams.

- I like the little imagery here.

And now I see his kind’s art; beautiful, delicate.

- I think it should be a colon or a dash instead of a semi-colon there after 'art'.

Me wonder if it was this was the very web. The web that he had spun
While he was still alive.

- The 'if it was this was the very web' is grammatically wrong. o.o I think you forgot to remove 'it was' or the 'was' after 'this'.
- I think it should be a comma after 'web' instead of a period since the succeeding sentence is directly connected to it and is actually incomplete.

I can remember the blood seeping into the ground,
So helpless.

- There was already a line in the last verse which is very similar to this one: 'and his blood seeped into the dry soil.' I think it's a little too repetitive.
- The comma after 'ground' should be a period since the 'So helpless.' doesn't actually feel connected to the line.

But when all’s said and done...

- This grammatically doesn't make sense. It could have if the first line in the following verse was connected to this phrase, but it wasn't. Maybe, 'But all was said and done' or something like that is better?

I should never had treated him that way.

- To use 'had' after' should is wrong. You should use 'have' or 'have had'.

We have no right to mess around
With their secrets. Like the keys to doors. If the door is not ours,
We shouldn’t look for the key. Because it shouldn’t be found.

- This is a nice ending , but it doesn't make sense in the story of the poem 'cause the persona never mentioned that he messed with the spider's secrets. He just stepped on the spider.


This poem is interesting. I'm not sure if I like it though. o.o It's somewhat up and down. The first verse was nice. The second verse felt weak for me. It was interesting to read but it seemed a little too telly compared to the other verses. It felt like a story instead of a poem. The third and fourth verses were good but there are a couple of mistakes to fix which I mentioned in my nitpicks.

Anyway, the concept of the poem is interesting as well. As far as I've observed, people don't normally make poems about such things xD, so .

Never stop writing!