Vintage Bus Day, 21st May 2023
Olive single-decker accelerates for Happy Mount
gentle hills beyond the bay, occluded mountains misted out
the panorama undulates a hypnotic content
a summer model of life and tide
all cast below Bare’s tall tower
whose distinctive chequerboard exudes the decades passed –
though May blossom recurs forever, we hope
and whitens the greens on the way to Hest Bank
countering the daffodils all gone – and that melancholy shiver:
how many Springs?
Gateways and gardens to Bolton-le-Sands
where the Far Pavilion’s exotic dancer, girded with praise
is suppliant for custom.
A white 20s house with a redbrick Plimsoll line
leads the way to a perfect jumble of Metroland
mellow red roof tiles and graceful windows
open meandering pathways in the mind
travelling a century back.
Here the stained-glass oval doorway myths
are undisturbed by the power catenary
which the railway weaves through this sweeping land
shallow rise and fall towards the border
freshened fields in lines of cut grass,
the smell, the greenness, another throwback to the past
but the future is here, we shouldn’t waste time thinking of all that is lost
meeting Carnforth with the mind’s cross-Channel drift . . .
to Sailly-sur-la-Lys.
Carnforth – twinned with Sailly-sur-la-Lys
© Lawrence Freiesleben, January 2026
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