A July Day In Nature and Poetry

Fledgling Blackbird

As late as the first week in July there are still baby blackbirds who cannot fly. I found this one on a table on the terrace after a night of high winds.  Every time it hopped away from me it lost more bits of fluffy feathers. In the end it hopped, skipped and stumbled off the table and under a large lilac bush, where it hid, issuing pitiful little gurgles, a sound like a blunt pebble being rolled on a rough, earthy surface.

I stood well away and mother turned up, clucking and fussing.

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms,

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

Wallace Stevens
From Thirteen Ways to look at a Blackbird

A sparrow's nest ?

This tiny nest came down with the wind,  

It is bowl-shaped, very shallow, and

no more then 4 inches wide.

Whenever I find  birds' nests I am always surprised  how spotless they are.

Birds truly do not 'foul their own nests'.

The married birds with nice selection cull
Soft thistledown, gray moss, and scattered wool,
Line the secluded nest with feathery rings,
Meet with fond bills, and woo with fluttering wings.

Erasmus Darwin
from Reproduction of Life

A Dead Mole

I found this mole by the compost heaps, just lying there, stiff and cold, without any discernible injury.

I hope Moley died of old age, after a riotous night at Toad Hall with Ratty and Badger and Mr. Toad.

Benno and I gave him a decent burial, reading a poem as part of the ceremony:

A Dead Mole

Strong-shouldered mole,

That so much lived below the ground,

Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,

For you to raise a mound

Was as for us to make a hole;

 What wonder now that being dead

Your body lies here stout and square

Buried within the blue vault of the air?

Andrew Young

Except, of course, the poet must eventually have done what we did,

buried him in a hole in the ground. Air burials are not at all the thing round here.

How many of these will it have taken to make moleskin waistcoats?




Rural England

An English scene, 

a sky that cannot decide whether it should rain or shine,

a hay meadow, cut,

a field where sheep may safely graze,

and fields of crops, like the barley field in the middle of the picture 

all divided by hedgerows.

Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay, that scents the swelling breeze,
Or cottage chimney smoking through the trees.

Gilbert White




Wild Orchid

Common spotted orchid

I found this orchid on the edge of the woods,
between the path and the field, with a small stream running alongside.


the orchid blossoms
and I can't explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure
comes from one small bud,
and a long, spindly stem.

Sam Hamill
From The Orchid Flower




When Evening Shadows Fall

The view from my window in summer.

When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 
and listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;


Gilbert White
From The Naturalist's Summer Evening Walk.