Light

[rejectomorph]

Able to snatch a few minutes of relaxation after dinner, I sat in the shady spot in the front yard. I noticed something hovering above the bush about twenty feet in front of me. There was a little bright orange oblong. At first I thought it was a small butterfly, but it stayed in the same area too long, just moving back and forth, up and down, never more than few inches. Suddenly, as it rose up a bit, it changed from orange to violet. Odd behavior for an insect, I thought. Then it rose a bit more, shrank to a dot, and turned blue for a moment before it sank back down, grew long again, and returned first to violet, then orange. I suddenly realized that it was light reflecting from a strand of spider silk strung from the tree above me to the bush. It was acting as a prism, and, as it moved in the slight breeze, fragmenting the sunbeams into their component colors. I lacked the time to hang around and see any more of this piecemeal rainbow. The sunlight was soon caught by the tall pines behind the houses across the way, in any case. Maybe I'll see this phenomenon another day. Now, back to the tidying.