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146 the widows’ handbook November 26, 1992: Thanksgiving at the Sea Ranch, Contemplating Metempsychosis Sandra M. Gilbert You tried coming back as a spider. I was too fast for you. As you climbed my ankle, I swept you off, I ground you to powder under my winter boot. Shall I cherish the black widow, I asked, because he is you? You were cunning: you became the young, the darkly masked raccoon that haunts my deck. Each night for weeks you tiptoed toward the sliding doors, your paws imploring, eyes aglow. Let me in, Let me back in, you hissed, swaying beside the tubbed fuchsia shadowing the fancy cabbage in its Aztec pot. And you’ve been creatures of the air and sea, the hawk that sees into my skull, the seal that barks a few yards from the picnic on the shore. Today you chose a different life, today you’re trying to stumble through the tons of dirt that hold you down: you’re a little grove of mushrooms, rising from the forest floor you loved. Bob saw you in the windbreak— memories, ghosts, dreams 147 November mushrooms, he said, off-white and probably poisonous. Shall I slice you for the feast? If I eat you, will I die back into your arms? Shall I give thanks for God’s wonders because they are all you, and you are all of them? The meadow’s silent, its dead grasses ignore each other and the evening walkers who trample them. What will you be, I wonder, when the night wind rises? Come back as yourself, in your blue parka, your plaid flannel shirt with the missing button. These fields that hum and churn with life are empty. There is nowhere you are not, nowhere you are not not. ...

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