Fields

* I scratch the black cat between her ears and open the front door to leave. The light is dull, clotted with harvest dust. Chill air moves over my face in gentle waves. It is autumn on the prairie. I am going to the office. I step over the sill and imagine my return, when the cat will come trotting down the hall—before I see a shadow and form, I hear a voice calling out to be attended to. * I scratch the black cat between her ears and open the front door to leave. The light is dull, the air chilly and breezy. A chain of plaintive coos issues from a mourning dove in the neighbor’s Douglas fir. I drive past the fields that make this county the nation’s largest producer of wheat, second largest of lentils. Miles of rolling dun now, stubble-scape of dry stalks punctuated by scraggly cottonwood with bare branches. All of this, the soil and the seeds, was blown in from elsewhere.