Gossamer Ships in Morning Mist

I stepped outside this morning to let the chickens explode from the coop. Then I strolled to the garden to see if anything at all was happening there ... well, anything except the small cantaloupe Ned picked this morning and ate half of for breakfast. Quite a damp, misty morning.

The ground was covered with tiny pocket spiders' webs.

The tall grass in the pasture was even more sparkling with larger webs.

(It wasn't really that big; I was very close.)

But the tiny pocket webs hanging suspended in the short grass -- 

I found myself dazzled by their shapes.

They look like sailing ships on their way somewhere through a grassy sea.

Masts erect, sails spread, bowsprit forward! 

Do you see it?

A craftsman could work days to replicate such a beauty,

but a simple spider makes that in the dark, in hours.

This one's a thicker vessel with multiple masts,

slowly forging its way through heavy seas.

The spider, I suppose, is the captain.

Elsewhere in the garden there is beauty.

This is just a weed climbing and blooming among the dead cucumber vines.

A gourd blossom sparkles in dewy sunlight.

The gourd itself hides among the vines and weeds.

This is what made me go back to the house to retrieve my camera: 

late tomato blossoms, detailed in dew like rime frost.

If I hadn't run, I might have missed it

 if the sun had run faster and dried the pasture,

the webs and the ships and the waves and the rime.

Beauty is fleeting like a smile.