Spider Crystal Ascension

By Charles Wright b. 1935 Charles Wright

The spider, juiced crystal and Milky Way, drifts on his web through the night sky

And looks down, waiting for us to ascend ...

At dawn he is still there, invisible, short of breath, mending his net.

All morning we look for the white face to rise from the lake like a tiny star.

And when it does, we lie back in our watery hair and rock.

Charles Wright, “Spider Crystal Ascension” from Country Music: Selected Early Poems. Copyright © 1982 by Charles Wright. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

Source: Country Music: Selected Early Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1982)

Biography

Charles Wright is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, Wright attended Davidson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he also served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. His early work, including The Grave of the Right Hand (1970), received positive critical attention, but his reputation . . .

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