Robert Browning and the Spider Poet

Poet Robert Browning was known to keep a pet spider in a skull on his desk. Perhaps it gave him inspiration, or perhaps he just liked the idea …

My mistress needs neither sun nor moon for her creative moments. Drawing shut the brocade curtains of her boudoir, she pens her poems by candlelight. Flickering shadows form a web around her lovely silhouette. Certainly Master Browning himself would enjoy her inspirations — but even more, the sight of her.

Her midnight curls are drawn to fine designs with clip and braid. With those bright black eyes and liquid voice, she was made to confound men, and I was one.

I procured the finest black net stockings from Hong Kong and watched closely as she drew them on her luscious legs. But one night, she removed those nylons, used them to bind my arms with complicated knots, humming “Love Me Tender”.  Thus mesmerized, I was all willing for her games,

Yes, I was so confident, so sure of my manhood. I imagined the smell of my sweat on her skin, the joy of our union. Our sighs of satiation, perhaps a smothered giggle. But that idea was scaled down some, since her perfect legs had multiplied, and mine had not.

And now she keeps me as a pet, inside a human skull upon her desk. It’s much like Robert Browning’s own. Sometimes she strokes my shiny head with long dark fingers, admiring my diminutive condition.

Her poems often mention spiders as did Browning’s years ago. Unobtrusive as the deadly recluse, lethal as a spider’s potent kiss.

∼ Marge Simon