Old Trackway

Two parallel lines of black oak stake-tops run dead straight across the bog, away from the last cut and into the distance, with split planks lying between them in places. Mist lies in the hollows. The sun is low and white. In the foreground the dark peat face shows the stakes standing upright in its wall like the teeth of a comb, sliced clean by spades, and they stand at the very bottom of the peat rather than the top. An unfinished fence stops a few posts short of them. Either side spreads bog lawn: cotton grass, heather hummocks, sundews and small black pools. Farther out, the heather gives way to bright moss in a wide, faint ring, and there the stakes end. Beyond the ring the moss is a floating mat, green and gold, rippling very slightly in the stillness. At its centre lies a single round pool. Black, and perfectly still. No weed grows in it at all.