My daughter’s doing something long and hard this weekend so I wanted to do a haiku in honor of that feat and inspired by one of the photos from the day. But then I was like, “bikes aren’t exactly endemic to the natural world!” and I went looking for metaphors.

Well. You all. Golden wheel spiders do cartwheels to roll across the landscape quickly and away from prey!! What??? Isn’t the wild world just full of absolutely brilliant and whimsical and gorgeous magic?

Haiku 25, 2026

Brave and free-ranging
like a clutter of spiders
orbing over land