Light Paw

Light Paw

The fox crept round the campus
Abandoned long ago
Moved further down from Harpur Hill
Away from wind and snow
Nosing abandoned buildings
She pads through the fresh fall
Slyly as the flakes meander
And a mournful wind does call
She slinks down the hill townward
Stopping at the Blue Lagoon
Tainted a quicksilver
In the cold light of the moon
Refracted as the years spent
On summers side of winters veil
Retraced in the fallen snow
The paw prints brush the tail
From Denbigh, Buxton, Hazel Grove
A mournful wail's cast
Lonsdale, Duffield, Keddleston
The leavings of her past
To a junction on the outskirts
A crossroad of a kind
Where the cunning tread a fine path,
And slyly walk the line
Between the fiction of reality
And the cold hard facts of loss
The cameras never saw her there
… perhaps she never was