sonora2sonoma

Watching a spider spin silk

like his kind has done for countless millennia

Not trying to devise a bigger web

to increase his  bottom line . . .

just catching enough bugs

to get by

to sustain himself

to carry on his line.

Spiders

function to maintain

that little part of the environment

to which they have been entrusted.

To keep it clean

and act as a check on bug proliferation

while ensuring their continued survival

and relevance.

What can be said about spiders

in this regard,

can also be said of the other animals . . .

they function to maintain

that part of the environment

in which they live;

to maintain the balance between

the organisms that provide their food sources

and the larger environment as a whole.

They don’t seek to meet production quotas,

they don’t hoard resources for profit;

some species create surpluses,

but only to sustain them through the coming winter.

They don’t fancy themselves to be masters of their domains

allowing themselves to trash with impunity

all the other creatures of the earth

and the habitats that sustain them.

The only animal who does those things

is the one we see in the mirror each morning.

Petaluma, CA

12 October, 2016

Tim Konrad