A complimentary near-death experience

From The Muse Jar on cranberry bogs and insufficient job postings

The job posting said
must be comfortable outdoors

which is
significally insufficient because
no one told me
about the spiders

which feels like
the kind of detail
you mention

before sending a person
waist-deep
into a flooded field
of red berries

I was prepared for honest work

for mud
wet socks
for the noble ache
of rural labour

for the joy of knowing Christmas dinner
would include cranberry sauce
which was my favourite dish until today

I was not prepared
for the surface
of the water
to begin moving

not with wind

not with cranberries

with legs

hundreds of legs

grotesque creatures
evacuating the bog

they did not run away

no no

they climbed

up my waders
up my sleeves
toward my warm
and fearful human body 

and somewhere
from the edge of the field

a man named Earl
or Dennis
or something equally calm
yelled

don’t worry
they’re just wolf spiders

just?

as if adding wolf
to anything
has ever made it 
any less intimidating

just wolf spiders

just an actual biblical curse

I stood there

a seasonal employee
with little training

with no dignity
and approximately
several hundred reasons
to update my résumé

hoping my soul would
return to my body before
the spiders found my neck

learning too late

that somewhere
in the employee handbook
between
wear gloves
and
bring lunch

someone should have written

by the way
this job includes
a complimentary near-death experience.

Okay so this prompt was probably the funniest one I received. I am not a hater of spiders, however I prefer when they are not on my body, so the idea of someone unaware of the cranberry bog spiders had me cackling.

This post was inspired by one of the prompts dropped into The Muse Jar by probablyreading. Thank you so much for the support, this was one of the funniest prompts I think I have had the honour of reading.

The Muse Jar, a project where people submit something—a word, memory, smell, anything—and I randomly pick some to write a poem about.

If you would like to learn more about The Muse Jar, you can see the post below.

For Anyone Who Has Ever Wanted to Be Written About

If you would like to become a muse, you can submit here.

Photo by George Lopez on Unsplash