John Clare at Midsummer

At dawn, the corncrake is practicing its crex crex call. The pewit answers in stilted beeps. Summer’s ooze filters through the early haze, flattening the crofts into gouache. Men are mishmoshing, in rough lines, through grass, wet enough to soak the sock in minutes. Someone is crouching at the hedgerow, bent double over the unseen work of chafer beetles, or hoverflies, devil’s coachmen, or earwigs. There is muttering, beneath the susurrus of the scythe mowers. The man’s mouth is weighing the palp of the thicket in the wet heat. Dog rose, chickweed, cleaver, vetch.