Dear LPG,

Many of us older people are likely not to have noticed evidence of this tiny miracle of natural science for ages, because it tends not to leave its calling card on the items in the world that are categorised as ‘animal’ alone.   But when it comes to things ‘vegetable’ and ‘mineral’ all it needs is that time when the temperature falls at night or rises in the morning to make itself known.

Today my poem is about those tiny droplets of water that concentrate on making contact with your shoes when you take an early morning stroll on some grass, or that moisten your fingers as you touch a mettle banister to steady your steps during an early morning walk down an open-air staircase…

DEW

You look out the kitchen window.
The grass is dropping damp.
It had not rained. You see
stealthy dew drops.

You check the science
to follow the Dew Advisory Group.
They agree, by a majority,
warm days, cool evenings cause dew.

Nightly wakeful observations.
The dew is smart. Invisible to you,
Seen only by moon and stars
the unobservable dewfall.

Foster Murphy