my birthday present

my birthday present
My awesome birthday present 1/26/11 (see story under my first post)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Humectation


 
Dew
     Kay Ryan

As neatly as peas
in their green canoe,
as discreetly as beads
strung in a row,
sit drops of dew
along a blade of grass.
But unattached and
subject to their weight,
they slip if they accumulate.
Down the green tongue
out of the morning sun
into the general damp,
they're gone.

Yeah, humectation  is the fancy word for dew. 
I enjoy comparing poems on the same topic.

Dew

by Robert Morgan

It's something of a mystery,
this minute rain downloading from
the sky so slowly and invisibly
you don't know when it came except
at dusk the grass is suddenly wet,
a visitation from the air,
precipitant from spirit world
of whitest incarnation or
reverse transfiguration, herald
of river, swamp and ocean breath
sent heavenward, released to earth
again to water weed and stone,
and shatter rainbows in the sun,
the purest liquid that exists,
too fine to slake our human thirst.

"Dew" by Robert Morgan, from Terroir
© Penguin Poets, 2011.



1 comment:

marie-jo said...

Honestly, I think dew comes when grass decides to wear a necklace.

P.S. The most poetic dew piece is the National Geographic photo. Just magnificent.