Andrew Young focuses his usual perceptive eye on signs of the turning season. The midge-ball is a charming concept (the reality would not be); but what does the enigmatic statement, “Winds were their robins,” mean? A small puzzle from a writer whose precision of language is a trademark. The lines come from the clergyman-poet’s Selected Poems, published by Carcanet in 1998.

Although a thoughtful bee still travels
And midge-ball ravels and unravels,
Yet strewn along the pathway lie
Like small open sarcophagi
The hazel-nuts broken in two
And cobwebs catch the seed-pearl dew.
 
Now summer’s flowers are winter’s weeds,
I think of all the sleeping seeds;
Winds were their robins and by night
Frosts glue their leafy cover tight;
Snow may shake down its dizzy feathers,
They will sleep safely through all weathers.