The Dogs and Owls of Charente Maritime
The corn and wheat cut, the straw wire-baled, the still standing stalks cut down.
Soon, man and plough will turn the soil, and we’ll see what goes on underground.
Chaff, stem and roots gone to ground unto dust where all are from.
Nothing round here goes to waste. Everything’s everyone’s.
A different crop will slake the soil of the lacking left it, and leave one again.
And the plants will go up, and burrow under, and be slender and belong; and either fail — or flourish, else — in swing with the seasonal songs.
The dogs bayed, ecstatic, as Fabrice drove by on his tractor on asphalt at stirring top speed.
His Rhodesian ridgebacks, friendly and free, hung a right and cut through the barley; and were gone and came out on the other side — all knotted backs and flapping yaps — and were gone and we laughed till we cried.
We mowed in time for the rain to come in and watched as the swollen sky birthed: Insistent, unstinting drawing us out waking us with the earth.
The days are long, maybe sixteen hours, but shorter all the time.
It’s late July. The air is cooling. spiders and owls shelter in.
Quiet reminder of a perfect past time that farm folk took their part in.