Dunford Bridge

Dunford Bridge by Neil McCall

The place was somehow wilder
when the riveted electrics
hummed their way through Woodhead
and burst out of the tunnel
like sparky old dragons with a tailful of coal
in my fifties railway annual

then, twenty years later,
cut down to size in the whirlwind of willow-herb
with a creak and crash of semaphore signals
flaky but still impressive
a final heave of legacy industry
where moorland stooped to rust and rubble.

But now,
when every wilderness is staked and symboled
leafleted as trail or way
old sleepers cleared for the car park,
the dragon's lair screened and fenced
with only kestrels calling from the heather banks

all is quite pretty, and lost.