This wood has a thousand exits and entrances:
stiles, gates and tripets, gaps and breaches.

This wood is hammer-pond, clay and chalybeate,
charcoal and slag heaps, leats and races.

This wood hides the boar in a thickety hemmel;
is home to the scutty, the flindermouse, the kine.

This wood is cut and coppiced and burned,
chestnut and hazel turned to broom handles.

This wood is two green flanks of sandstone
pinched by the link of iron bridge over water.

This wood keeps its secrets: the peat-black
knuckerhole where the dragon lies sleeping.

This wood scolds with a tawny owl’s brogue,
shrucking and shraping, kewick hoohoo.

This wood is ashen, eldern, and oaken –
a mile from the village, ring-fenced, well-trodden.

Daybreak. This wood calls you out of your house
to walk through leaf-fall and bluebells and moss.