Saddleworth Moor

This is the place where time has died
and earth has eaten its past.
Once these lands were forests.
You find their bones -
the trees’ bones,
shrinking into icy brown fingers
with dust and decay of heather 
interred in the peaty black.
There’s grass – shivering grass -
and strange green
stunted cowering vegetable entities
and the silent white trumpets
of the lichen,
poaching life from 
an almost invisible green spot
by a grey-black pool  -
and a Plover keens
a dying fall.

These are the troll stones –
massive grey mimics
of unknown fabled creatures
too dreadful to live
too strong to die
shaped by a carving wind
howling like a child’s cry
digged into the past.

Somewhere.
Somewhere there are bones.