A water drop hangs from the tip of each blade of grass. In the lower left of the frame the leaves cluster thickly and come alive in a bright yellow green, and toward the right both leaves and drops blur and sink into a dark blue black. Near the center one leaf is slightly bent at the tip, and at that bend two drops sit one behind the other. It is early morning with the sun low, or an overcast day just after the rain stopped.
The rain has already passed, and what remains is this hanging.
The way rainwater reaches the ground is all contained in this photograph. It catches on a leaf and is slowed once, it rolls down and is slowed again, and then it seeps into the black gaps of the soil. Where a city has erased this process, the same rain rushes into the drains in an instant and overflows.
This brief delay in which a single leaf holds one water drop is drinking time for the roots and soaking time for the ground. Why opening the cracks in the asphalt a little and letting grass grow matters as much as drainage work, the dense cluster of leaves on the left of the photograph quietly shows.
Look again at the upper right corner. Out of focus, a blurry brown mass lies diagonally. Whether it is a dry fallen leaf or a clump of wet earth is not clear, and the boundary where the color turns from green to brown is there. While the grass holds water, decay is under way beneath it.
Collapsed leaves become soil, and that soil holds the next rain. It means that planting only green does not complete the work. The brown has to be left as well for the water's path to continue.
In the very bottom left corner, the drop formed on one leaf sags almost to the point of falling. The soil beneath it is not visible in the photograph. How much ground is left under our feet that has made a place for a drop to settle into, we look at the photograph once more, recalling the roads we walked today.
