Well, so there’s life on the moon. Little spiderlike things, they say—a marvelous discovery. Nine legs, not eight, but otherwise the classic spider look. Translucent whitish little buggers creeping about on the white-rock face of the moon. Who knew?

Already they have crawled into the vernacular, these “moon spiders.” Already, a week after the discovery, it is difficult to remember a time when, for us, there were no spiders—no life at all—upon the moon.

I may as well report (not that the thoughts of a lowly middle-school science teacher count for much) that I preferred the old, lifeless moon. Life has its corollary, after all. No longer may a troubled earthbound soul look out at the moon and think: There at least nothing dies.

But I suppose if I were on the moon and didn’t know any better, I would look at the earth and say to myself, There I wouldn’t be alone.

Douglas Watson’s book of stories, The Era of Not Quite, will be published by BOA Editions in 2013. He holds an MFA from Ohio State and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at this year’s Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He lives in Brooklyn and is writing a short novel about love and death.