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The withy-bed. Now a damp wood. It has rained. Early Spring showers from a burgeoning cloudscape. There is a chill breeze in unsheltered spots. Between the trees, sudden bright sunlight across the woodland floor which is clothed in the fresh green of new growth. This wood, once tended for its harvest of willow wands, is reverting to a virgin state: trunks lie where they fell, tumbled, askew and rotting. Emerald moss cushions thick on the deadwood. Willow sticks still grow, now crooked and leggy, from the crumbling boles.This watery place has two levels. Down a muddy slope to a swampy stream. Here are pools where the symmetries of marsh-marigold and watercrowsfoot confound the jumble of stream and wood. This place was abandoned long ago to the wild. People have joined in its randomness: beneath the slope, part covered by earth-slip and grown through with plants, is a mass of…