Cloud Watching

I watched a cloud forming and dissolving.

I was lying in a deckchair looking straight upwards. Two wisps of vapour drifted into one and the whole began to grow- not moving laterally but expanding from its centre- creating itself from nothing, taking on form and substance and shading- until it was fat enough to be carrying rain- then acquiring dimples which became holes as the structure pulled apart into wispy fragments that faded to nothing.

Under An Oak

I looked out an upstairs window and saw a lumpy shape I didn't recognise at the foot of one of the oak trees. The light was dim and there was foliage in the way and it took me a while to work out that what I was seeing was one of the rabbit shooters in his camouflage gear with his back against the tree- pretending to be part of the tree- with his rifle on its tripod between his outspread legs. No sooner had I made the identification than he started to move, got up and shifted his ground- as if some scientifically undocumented sense had told him he had been spotted and was under observation.