Careless Rambles by John Clare. John Clare

      Come, Eliza and Anna, lay by top and ball And, friendly boy, throw away cart and toys all, Look about for your hats and dispense with your play, We’ll seek for the fields and be happy today.

      Here, Clare is taking his own children (Eliza, Anna & Freddy) out on a nature walk, but he also taking us along on the ramble, a walk as well perhaps into his own childhood past. His description of the landscape reads as if before the Enclosure Acts, when there were still plenty of open fields and common land around Helpston and the surrounding parishes. From vast sky-scape description of “hawks sailing proud as the clouds” to the flea-glass/microscope intimacy of ants “nimbling about in the grass”, we tag along on this happy sojourn.

      At heart the poems of John Clare also take me back to when I was much younger, to hot summer days spent wandering fields, inland lakes and woods of my northern Michigan, “Nick Adams” country. Our family spent many summers vacationing in this northern landscape. My parents owned property in an old Anishinabe Indian community situated along a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. The local farmers were a mix of Irish, English, German, and later Polish. By the early 20th century the logging industry that long defined the economy here had mostly disappeared. Few descendants of the original inhabitants remain. But not long ago an older generation would often leave a wood chair propped against their front door when away from the house. You would see this from a distance and save yourself the walk. A lost civilized touch.

      Red and Jack pine, birch, box elder, poplar, maples, Doug fir, the long lived white cedar, various oaks, beech, and elm along with an abundance of nut bearing trees make up the surrounding forest. The majestic northern white pine (Weymouth pine in Britain) is also found in these woods. I had my favorite climbing trees, a number of old oaks, and an ancient pine that still stands. There were a pair of magnificent elms that grew together in the middle of a field between the bluff and lake. Raspberry bushes surrounded these huge trees. They appeared untouched by Dutch-elm disease, that was responsible for the loss of the big elms that lined the street I grew up on in the city of Flint. These healthy trees were later cut down, for reasons I still can not fathom.

      My father was keen on birds and delighted in identifying their calls. This interest extended to his knowledge in identifying trees and the grain in their wood. We had our secret spot for finding elderberries, snapping off bunches to take home, washing and stripping berries from the branches, leaving finger tips stained purple, for pies. We often collected black walnuts, a time-intensive passion with a meager return when we counted the number of eatable nuts retrieved.

      I picked mushrooms from deep in the woods and we all hunted for raspberries and blueberries. We kept an open-eye when fresh bear scat was found in the low growing bush. I spent many long hours in solitary observation of nature, for pure enjoyment.

      The idea of an illustrated collection of Clare simply came about as I was reading his poems. The superb John Clare: A Biography by Jonathan Bate was also an inspiration. A handful of my pen/ink sketches appeared in The John Clare Society Journal in 2009.

      There is a wanderlust and a rambling sense of discovery in Clare’s poetry, that I wanted to convey with this collection. Clare was such a prolific poet it could not be helped that a number of excellent poems would have to be left out. I picked the poems I liked. This selection is my own.

       Tom Pohrt 20th October, 2011