Musically, the track starts with the guitar ringing out, transitioning from “Wolf Am I (And Shadow)”. This is the first of the spider trilogy. In an interview with Lambgoat, Aaron states that the spider trilogy was originally one song but Mike Almquist suggested they split into three songs. This allowed them to switch up the instrumentation on each. This one features an accordion and an acoustic guitar. 

We took the twine we used to use
To tie up tight our tattered shoes
Twisted twigs and crooked cross
A necklace for the deeply lost

This song comes in the wake of the destruction of the last two songs. Amongst the wreckage, he finds some twine and twigs that he fashions into a cross necklace “for the deeply lost.” He knows he’s lost and he’s turning toward God.

There’s an interesting use of “we” here, which I take to be the multiple aspects of the inner personality conflict he was going through in “Wolf Am I (And Shadow)” but it could be something else.

—————-

Builder with the broken bricks
Mother to the baby chicks
You made this world to look so nice
I wonder what the next one’s like?

God is the “builder with the broken bricks” and “mother to the baby chicks” (a metaphor that continues in “O, Porcupine”: “While waiting for the mother hen to gather me / Who regretfully wrote “you have a decent ear for notes / But you can’t yet appreciate harmony”).

—————-

Yellow spider, yellow leaf
Yellow spider, yellow leaf
Yellow spider, yellow leaf
Confirms my deepest held belief…

The spider and the leaf are symbolic of the death of Aaron’s “self”, which starts as yellow and transitions to orange and brown as the album goes on.

In the interview with Lambgoat, Aaron stated:

It was written as one song based on seeing a brown spider and it was on a brown leaf. I just thought of the way that animals get by and the food is provided for them. Then the leaves fall off of the trees and then they come back the next year, and how everything works real well. So I write all the lyrics keeping that in mind…