At the top of steps into the railway cutting stands a wooden post. It is old and weathered and, when sunlight through trees catches it, a beautiful greenfinch blush of moss and algae.
The post, which I think was a railway sleeper planted to mark a crossing point on the line, may have been there since the Much Wenlock and Severn Junction railway opened in 1862; it has been in position since the railway closed 100 years later in 1962.
“Sleeper” is a good name for it, although it is not lying down – which I think is the origin of the name. It is erect and monumental, like a standing stone or a fragment of a wooden henge, but far from being dead or inert, it appears to be asleep: a dreaming post.
Its green pelt and ivy give it a venerable air; not just a relic of the railway age, but an archive of local history and a timeless landmark.
Things like this have a feeling of permanence that are taken for granted until they are lost, as so many of the unofficial waymarks have been. The poet John Clare was upset when a favourite post was removed during the enclosures in 1824: “It hurt me to see it was gone, for my affections claim a friendship with such things; but nothing is lasting in this world” (Journals, 29 September). I claim a friendship with this post, whether it be deaf or listening or dreaming.
It is not just a thing but a place, one where the robin whets his winter whistle as the Oak King, the neopagan king of the waxing year at the solstice, slays the Holly King, king of the waning year, in the form of a wren.
It is the place where dogs leave secret messages; where flies fidget in a little warmth; where an axle turns slowly through the years; where a lump of wood hides burning coal, smoke and steam of trains; the place before the cutting was dug, where the trees grew back. In this world, only dreams last.
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