THE GATEPOST

This forest was torn down on behalf of old wars;

mined and ravaged for materials to fight - survive:

where POWS could be usefully enslaved.

Even, tamed and polite local labour,

to serve their country.

Trees themselves weren’t asked.

Nowadays, the trees grow big again - put to good employ for fun.

Which depends on funds and resources, ofcourse.

spacetime is ever expensive.

Humans swing through the treetops

like monkeys,

picnic in the glades, walk dogs 

and bike or ride 

along the many miles of trail or track

it’s wildness safely monitored by Wi-Fi.

 Seeing is NOT believing, afterall:

there are witnesses of Allsorts -

fairies, angels, spies, satelites,

even sensing trees, everywhere.

Haldon - Hagheledon, Haw-hyll-dun  itself is primordial. it’s bones

in ancient, equatorial seas

the flint and shale self-evident

in badgers holts and fox-holes,

where springs and rain erode the soil.

At the edges of the towering latter-day conifer-forestry

there’s a bank planted with beech, 

coppiced long ago by medieval man

and there, well grafted and ingrown

is a great stone post - not a stray  megalith;

 a rusty hinge betrays that it’s no way-marker, 

but an iron-age gatepost - somewhere to stop.