Lake | Martin Heslop and Helen Tookey

this country has a lake in it

hour after hour    the blue of it
unfolds at my hand    quiet companion

the blue of it    like an earth hum
a low song

long salt water    holding the clouds
holding the miles and miles of trees

brilliant with sunlight    a million needles
lying aligned

it steers me north by east
all the way to the end of the land

After the first glitters of the year, I watch the lake. The sun brings it blue,
silverdew on the shore-stones. The pitspoil bag digs holes in my back.
Up the hill from the shoreline, a path for hauling boats between
peninsulas. On the top, an old canoe made of birch bark, a side wind.
I pull the bag off, climb in, lie flat down to rest.

The wind fills, loosens again, I pull myself to my feet. The bag feels heavy,
like I’m carrying old voices, voices made of crystal and coal. I carry them
down the other side, down to the lake again.

The same lake as before but thicker water, flickered with salt, and
everything slower. A man, then a woman, chanting the land, oh drumlin
fields, drumlin fields. The mine under the ocean, far and deeply away.
We curled into winter then, counting the circles of the dance.

‘Lake’ appears in Martin Heslop and Helen Tookey’s To the End of the Land. Available as a 28-page pamphlet and 40-minute CD, it is available now from Longbarrow Press; you can order it securely by clicking on the relevant PayPal button below.

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