Moonlight Mystery

It wasn’t unusual, that summer, for the collie and I to walk in the dusk, or even the dark. We would stroll out onto the downland with the bright banners of sunset fading on our left, and the last rooks settling into the trees that lined the trailway below us.

That evening, we trod quietly, because we were hoping a patrolling owl would thrill us with a hunting pass. He didn’t appear, so at last I set the collie free to run and race and bounce and dance. How she loved that! Her piebald face would turn to me at the end of a racing circuit of the grass, and seem to laugh for very joy.

That was when I spotted the German shepherd trotting northwards, and then turning east towards us.  Suddenly anxious, I bent to my panting dog, to re-attach the lead to her collar. “We’ll meet this big dog together,” I assured her, and she licked my hand in understanding.

I looked up, to locate the German shepherd.  But he had utterly disappeared.  We looked for him that night, and for many nights to come, but never saw him again.  Yet in my mind, I can see him now, loping towards us, silvered by moonlight, beautiful.

JCG

Blandford, 22d January, 2012