Some engaging similes (foliage hanging on trees like heavy wigs, for example) lend charm to the customary sharp observations that Andrew Young offers in this high-summer ramble.

The piece comes from his Selected Poems (Carcanet, £9.95).

AUGUST

The cows stood in a thundercloud of flies,

As lagging through the field with trailing feet

I kicked up scores of skipper butterflies

That hopped a little way, lazy with heat.

The wood I found was in deep shelter sunk,

Though bryony leaves shone with a glossy sweat

And creeping over ground and up tree-trunk

The ivy in the sun gleamed bright and wet.

Songs brief as Chinese poems the birds sung

And insects of all sheens, blue, brown and yellow,

Darted and twisted in their flight and hung

On air that groaned like hoarse sweet violoncello.

No leaf stirred in the wood-discouraged wind,

But foliage hung on trees like heavy wigs;

The sun, come from the sky, was close behind

The fire-fringed leaves and in among the twigs.