I Have Hallucinated Twice

I have hallucinated twice.  
Both times, I saw a black spider.  

The first time, I was with my wife,
Sitting outside a house that we dreamed of owning.
But it was only a dream,
A passing hopeful fantasy.
We were visiting our favorite town
A special place for us, a dreamy place,
A place made sacred by the love of one man: Juhannes Huber.
And we stopped at an old adobe house that appeared to be vacant.
And as we sat in the car and talked, a spider ran across my leg,
A big black spider.  It was probably the size of a large black widow, maybe larger.
But it was not a black widow, just very large and black.  
I cried out and jumped and went to brush it away,
But before I could do so, it was gone.

The second time I hallucinated,
I drove up the canyon to be alone and pray.
I sat in the middle of a bridge that went over the creek.
And as I sat there praying, 
A huge black spider crawled out from under my hand onto the top of my hand.
This one was much larger than the one I’d seen years earlier.
Its body was probably two and a half inches long from front to back
And its abdomen an inch and a half in diameter.
And it appeared as real as anything I’ve ever seen with my natural eyes.
Immediately, I tried to shake it off, but before I could, it disappeared.

Isn’t that strange?
And I don’t have an explanation for it.
I prayed about it, but no answer came.
I was left to wonder what it was.
Perhaps it was a warning,
Though it isn’t always good to think that way.
And like I said, I didn’t get an answer one way or another.
Perhaps I am just a little crazy.  
That is completely possible if not probable.
But it didn’t feel that way.
What do you do when a great black invisible spider 
Appears out of nowhere unannounced and without explanation, 
And then disappears just as quickly as it came?  Nothing really.  There is nothing that you can do.
You just have to keep on living.

That’s what I did.