The grains are ripening now

the wheat turns gold,

rape and flax have lost their bloom

heavy with their produce

bend with seed.

How still ! All in silence hope

to go unnoticed

the blue/black front of lightening

flattens fields with hail

close at hand.

The ditches have been mowed

yet shrubs survive

nesting birds are on their second batch

hiding  motionless, as if

not there.

My dog,  no sense of what’s to come,

plunders unaware

seeking nests, he stirs things up,

head down, he chases

into the fields..

only the tail above the tall grain

betrays his place.

Or ears flying he leaps in view

Too intent to hear (or to obey)

“Where is the dog?”

or with the crop, the field, the air, the earth,

to recognize

that everything is not

just now, the same. So

preoccupied is he.