A Hundred Years from Now
a poem by David Shumate
I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking. What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have you invented new vegetables?. . . . Have you trained spiders to do your bidding? . . .
There is more to this poem by Mr. Shumate, but I am stuck on the spider line. It makes me think of grand possibilities having to do with spiderdom, which at best is ignored by us humans, and at worst, despised, often deeply feared.
The idea of training spiders to do my bidding had never entered my mind, and the practicality of it appeals. We all have more spiders than people in our lives, however immaculate we think our houses. I certainly have enough of them, my basement being a haven for daddy longlegs, one of the most poisonous of spiders, I hear, who would kill me if they could open their mouths wide enough.
If someone could train the legions below quarters (so to speak), my days would be less repetitious – all this constant dusting, sweeping, laundering, dishwashing, scrubbing could be done by insects! What a solution. I would never have to wash another window.
Once the scientists figure out how to train the little buggers, within a short time, what with our propensity for disregard of all things we consider beneath us, spiders would have to declare their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of bug happiness. Someone would form a group, the SPCB (the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Bugs), and we would learn to love and take care of them; perhaps herd them or walk them on leashes. Bugs on the loose endanger themselves right and left. I would bet that like dogs they would dash – well, creep — out in front of cars. Instant beetle juice.
They would need diligent training; surely scientists could figure this out.
Arachnaphobia (fear of spiders) runs amok among humans. If we could corral these usually tiny critters, tame them, teach them to be responsible and helpful members of the societies whose basements they live in, this fear would turn to love. Arachnaphilia (love of arachnids, within whose family we’d run across not only spiders but scorpions, ticks and mites) would bloom like the love between dog and man, so often written about, at least in Western literature.
I believe that the scientists who never stop working on a new toothpaste could lay off that truly overdone piece of commercialism and turn their brilliance to something worthwhile — the enlightenment of spiders.
This, rather than toothpaste, would help a lot toward the well-being of humans. And spiders, seeing as how most of us step on one if we see one.
If the scientists got down to it, they could figure out how to harness multitudes of bugs — instead of multitudes of us — into war machines, where the really big-deal arachnids such as the scorpion could be warriors, fight each other, leave us to the more necessary yet always on the back-burner task of saving the planet.
Recently, articles and news stories tell us that we need more scientists. No doubt we do, if only to train bugs.
But I believe we need more poets and artists. Think about it; it was a poet who came up with this great spider idea, not some toothpaste maven. It may take a scientist to make it happen, but the idea guy . . . well, we know who that was.
It has been said (even by Einstein) that the artists always get there before the scientists.
Let’s hear it for poets, spiders, artists of all sorts . . .and a brave new world.
