If I was not so self-conscious, I would probably spend at least an hour some brisk morning sitting next to trees and shrubs, listening to and watching the dew slide off one leaf and strike another. After all, the French scientist Jean-Henri Fabre spent hours watching ants at work. When I was a child, I was chided for wasting time doing that very thing after reading about Fabre in a children’s encyclopedia. So perhaps that is why the self-consciousness lingers.
Back to the dew. Some leaves of trees and bushes, such as those of the enormous Buddha’s Belly bamboo in the front that shield passersby from the house (or vice-versa, I guess) seem coated in a fine dark green sheen. On them the dew shimmers like ice and drips noisily (so to speak) onto the next leaf and down a chain or slide to the ground. Other plants hold dewdrops for a moment and then, suddenly, the dew is gone. One must wait patiently and capture the moment of movement, which comes without advanced notice or fanfare.
I don’t know which metaphor is better or if both are object lessons, but the element of slowness and deliberation, versus sudden disappearance after glowing, seem two ways of being. Then there is the dew on the grass, which lingers far longer than on the trees and shrubs, and finally disappears back into its very roots. Another metaphor? Or something to enjoy as it is? banishing my tendency to find something behind the something, thus missing the something right in front of me. Oops, there I go again …