The horizontal mini-blinds must have been off-white when they were installed. Now they're tan from the exhaled smoke of countless cigarettes and little brown motes of coagulated dust right behind the exhaust fan of the mini-tower computer. When the blinds are twisted open, delicate cobwebs of long dead spiders trace random patterns against the sunlit bare, dark brown branches of the locust tree reaching to the spring. I am content with the cobwebs. How could you kill the creator of delicate, whispty, strength when all they are doings is that for which they were born? A kind of symbiosis exists between them and me. They give me scattered, light, glistening whisps drawn against dark brown branches. I let them and am content. In their lives they died searching for food to survive in a barren place. There is no food flying into a mini-blind. But they left beauty in the traces of their exisitence. © Pete (pbolte@msn.com (Pete Bolte)) ~INDEX PAGE~