The Pine Lake Manoeuvre  

Heading north, first cold day, scenting winter,  

 . . . the vanishment of leaves . . .                  

uncoiling the fused armature.

Low sun flicker reflects across bleak sands,

light-line to scatter the black birds.

Though mind lacks any extension towards insight

the energy of outside, floods from this parting air.

On blurred slates a few snatches of the journey remain:

nailed shutters over drowned bookshops

sediment patterning the streets . . .

a sadly lagging clock.

Yet the anger of frozen hands prevents retreat –

plus, the irritating thought

that gloves, separating fingers like twigs, make them colder than nothing.

Limply lit shell of Christmas – worn out in advance –

depresses curtained bay windows, shop displays and grizzled doorways

its regressive tradition of happiness forever banked on

to pick us up.

Have I given up on the idea of home?

to live in some eternal motion of impressions

a self-sealing, personal corbomite[i] 

X miles on, the shattered yards of railway carriages, blasted or blessed,

a fan of points and tracks under the coaling tower’s square skull:

hard colon to counteract the vacuum,

disparage the bland express rushing the high-speed curving camber nearby

– no smoke-smuts from this, somehow void.

The lane withers to frozen marsh at Keer Sands,

briars and brambles closing inland to defend themselves.

Looping north through black ice, eventually this is where the turn must be made,

two antlers of rustic cabins, two dead ends to almost meet around a flooded gravel pit,

the bluff of Noir,

stars and suns swallowed by Pine Lake,

ship-shape frontier to mask a wilderness of rusty light

the banished challenge, summits abandoned,

every genuine future thrown out . . .

Rather, as buildings gather, a weird lakeside bar, dark galaxy unknown,

nestles in a will-o-the-wisp of Christmas lights

to remain imaginary, obscured in overlaps and reflections.

Often what fascinates most is dread – hypnotic.

A reverse was swiftly executed.

© Lawrence Freiesleben

Heysham, November 2024 – February 2025

[email protected]

NOTE:

[i] memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Corbomite