As I descend to the meadow, leaving the vistas and vantage points of higher ground, I find myself mired, ground replete and dusted with tiny spiderwebs, really spider funnels. Webs made close to the ground, spindly veins of viscosity, formed simply and exquisitely held by a tender blade of grass, linked to another tender blade of grass.
Tiny food flues for the spider that lies in wait. Waiting for the random fly or moth or perhaps the motherlode of a cricket or grasshopper.
I find in those gauzy conduits so much wonder, so much life, and death.
So, I wonder how something made of such delicate fiber can ensnare life, trapping it there, taking it so completely. Or perhaps, the life lives on, capable of extricating itself from those sinewy tendrils.
It occurs to me that while these webs intended purpose is to kill, to take life, they are also providing sustenance. The spider must eat too. Those same filaments, those gossamer strands, snaring life and strangling it while at the very same time, sustaining life.
The delicate threads exists, their balance blown on the breeze...much like ours, wavering always between living and dying, which is to say the frangible actuality of being here at all.
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