1

How are screens made?

Who had the first idea?

Were a thousand ants trained

as weavers to work

tiny looms

to create my back porch

no fly zone?

Is there some massive press

with a billion tiny needles

to puncture thin steel sheets

to add to rolls and rolls sold at Lowes?

If a 10X6 foot screen

was squished so all the holes compressed,

how small would the solid sheet be?

And like the atom,

its neutrons, protons and electrons

crushed/together,

would the energy explosion

destroy True Value?

2

Today,

while dozing on my screened back porch,

I watched a mite

crawling up a panel.

The mite might have been

the size of two screen holes.

Big enough to keep him in

or his family out.

Did he even know he was imprisoned

or was his climb up the screen

a mere heroic effort to get

somewhere else

or surmount a mites Everest?

With no utility of reward

at the end of his assault

but an Edmund Hillary-ian victory

“Because it’s there”?

3

Does the mosquito know

what she has hit

when she collides with screen,

that invisible wall,

like a trampoline

keeping her from getting in,

or is it from getting out?

For there are squads of swallows

feeding on her friends.

Maybe the mite warned her

with some bug-code

humans have not decoded,

saying it’s safer inside.

What if a mosquito,

while just floating about minding its own business,

bounces of a screen

into the mouth of some predatory bat!

Thus the screen becomes

accessory to that trap

rather than an innocent aid

to my mediative doze

on a cool Autumn evening?

4

When we finally bought

Our Condo By The Sea,

we spent some money

on upgrades.

A new Frig.

New floors.

And new screens on the porch and sliding door.

The night after the work was done,

I blundered through the invisible screen,

crashing onto the new floor

in a pile of human clumsiness.

I felt a fleeting comradeship with bugs.

I swear

I heard a giggle

in the air around me.