Strong threads you weave;
\nA web of them,
\nAt first, to swaddle and protect –
\nSoftly subtle, safe cocoon,
\nWhere only pleasant dreams reside.<\/p>\n
Bright sunlight flickers, Night terror, you, So long ago, a truce – you But there! Just now, Happy New Year. And welcome to #WednesdayVerses. Vinay\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0Reema<\/a>\u00a0are offering a prompt each Wednesday to inspire you to write a poem. If it does, write it as a post on your blog, then come link up with them. If it doesn’t, then browse the links to read what others have written, and share the posts with your poetry-loving friends. The linky is open from Wednesday till the following Tuesday night! Please add your post to the link only<\/em> if it is a post written for #WednesdayVerses. All are welcome and invited to participate.<\/p>\n The prompt for this week is the picture of a lovely dream-catcher, which finds its origins in Ojibwe legends.<\/p>\n Author’s note: I wanted to learn more about the real history of the Native American dreamcatcher – not just the commercialized motif so popular since the 1990s or so and more likely made in China, now, than by Native American hands. I hope that my own reading and interpretation of the story does it justice. What I saw, in reading the legends, was mothers and sisters and grandmothers standing in as proxies for the protective Spider Woman, Asibikaashi, whose web hangs over children’s cradles and beds and “catches” all the nightmares and only lets good thoughts and dreams come through the center. But children grow up; part of becoming an adult is struggling against the protection and safety of their elders’ “webs” and learning to take care of themselves, so that they can one day take care of others. As a mother, myself, I know that it’s only after we’ve broken free of the “constraints” of what we see as “overprotectiveness” that we’re ready to accept help from the old “spider women” whose webs once chafed and annoyed us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A poem, inspired by Ojibwe legend and art, dreams and nightmares, and the tiny little weavers I’ve grown to respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-1010603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 04:26:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1010603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137990085,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010603\/revisions\/137990085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1010603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1010603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1010603"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=1010603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwarm, upon the glass, and I
\nCan’t move. Can’t breathe.
\nYour sticky net catches everything<\/em> –
\nGrows tighter as I struggle,
\nWiggling free.
\nWhere once I fed on you,
\nYou feed on me.<\/p>\n
\nYour breath tickling my cheek.
\nDoes it still breathe?<\/em> I hardly dare.
\nHalf-dreaming, I reach out,
\nSlap you. Slap me<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nRetreated to the shadows,
\nPresent, still.<\/em>
\nThose graying wisps
\nHang tattered, torn, defeated.
\nI learned to deal with nightmares
\nOn my own.<\/p>\n
\nUpon the dew-kissed window-pane,
\nI see you! Sunning yourself.
\nSmiling at the rounded belly
\nBeneath my hand, as we<\/em> –
\nIn our own ways, our own time –
\nBegin to weave.<\/p>\n
\n
\n