A Sense of Place

A Sense of Place

  Grant J. Venables

  Published by

  Grant J. Venables

  Copyright 2012 Grant J. Venables

 

  BOLD

 

  A Few Lines on…

  Bangkok--Just Under the Skin

  Coming soon, by Venables,

  the difference? (another new novel)

  the meaning (longer novel)

  Table of Contents

  Alberta

  Bangkok

  British Columbia

  England

  France

  Greece

  Holland

  India

  Japan

  Kuala Lumpur

  Laos

  Singapore

  Spain

  Switzerland

  Thailand

  United Arab Emirates

  United States of America

  Beyond Borders

  Author

  Notes and Thanks

  Alberta

  84

  The summer of 84

  Was hot,

  Hot enough for fires,

  Hot enough to turn a man,

  Hot enough for rampant flame, and we,

  Well north of Edmonton,

  North of Whitecourt,

  North of Moscow, Russia,

  We had fire eating away

  At the tough northern green

  That takes such slow years to grow.

  Rick and Gerald and I

  Worked those fires in 84

  And we were young, too,

  And the money was good,

  And we liked the work,

  And we were strong, and it was

  Tough work, man’s work;

  Three weeks in, one out.

  We were stationed, through part of 84,

  Midway up Bald Mountain—

  About 18 guys, two cooks,

  Two choppers: the big bird, a Sikorsky,

  The other one like a fly, like a dart;

  Every day was up, up, and away—

  And the money was good,

  And the work was hard.

  My brother, Doug, was 12 years older than me,

  And he moved beyond the great work

  We were satisfied with.

  He was twice our breadth

  And twice our width

  And his raw strength stifled—

  He was fair and righteous and carried

  A laugh like a

  Mountain.

  And that summer, in 84,

  I was prouder, even than I usually was,

  To be blood-tied to my broad and bearded brother,

  For that year he moved to Tower Man,

  And Rick and Gerald and I

  All held that in gap-jawed awe.

  Doug was a Tower Man,

  The noblest thing we thought a man

  Could be when we were strong and young and

  Worked hard and had muscle. Doug

  Was a Tower Man in the

  Rugged north

  With the arc of the earth under

  His wing and that quilt of green at

  His feet for as far as there was sky.

  And then and there in 84,

  Doug was, and we were near the

  Crown of Bald Mountain, but he,

  Splendid and knightly

  At the top of the silver turret,

  So clean and broad and sharp-eyed,

  So wise to watch the world

  With maps and compass points

  And calculations and binoculars like telescopes,

  And callipers,

  And that metal braced ladder going straight up, up, up

  And away into the middle of all

  That blue, blue summer sky day.

  And Doug, there, in 84, would

  Pierce the day with eyes like fins to slice the lines,

  Of forest’s green,

  And see a hint of smoke a thousand miles away,

  And gauge,

  Then send a message out,

  And some 2 K down that winding goat-path trail

  We would jump to,

  Gear up,

  Get in,

  Lift off,

  And fly far away to

  Find his waft of grey,

  And Wajax pack it safe away.

  And that summer season of 84

  With all that too much, too long heat,

  It had to burn.

  Lightening heavy with dry storms,

  White-light fingers pierced the earth,

  Uprooted ground, and thunderous, dry-crack sounds;

  Flames then feasted

  On tender-roots and tinder-trunks and too-dry leaves,

  But Doug, his shark fin cutting grids,

  Would hunt them quick, then radio.

  We’d lift off, too,

  And head out near his perched sky-view,

  He’d doff a silent cap and slight smile,

  Then nose down

  We would slice the sky and fly,

  To douse and cut

  And build a firewall

  All on his word,

  His shoulders, broad.

  He seemed to thrive on that command.

  He stood so tower tall, that man!

  On summer nights,

  The air still warm,

  By light of torch

  Gerald, Rick and I,

  Would hike the 2K up

  To mountain’s crown

  And find my brother,

  Freshly down from his celestial reach,

  And sit by fire light with him

  And listen, as his voice so clear and true,

  Would teach

  The ways of life,

  Of how and what to do,

  And how we'd listen,

  Without word,

  Until he was well through.

  All summer that of 84

  We worked Bald Mountain

  And White Mountain, Dry Lake,

  And Rainbow Lake, too,

  And Doug’s name at each tower

  Like flames hopped

  And praise grew from the rest

  For his perfect run of days

  When he was always first to spot

  A flame

  Or even wafts of grey,

  Anything into his infinite range,

  And he booked more days without a break

  Than any thought one man could take.

  Four months straight he lived

  In such nest with only his dog there

  (a scoundrel mongrel with one black eye

  and patches painted: harlequin).

  Doug said he’d work that whole summer long.

  “Never been done before,” they said,

  But Doug smiled quick: “I’ll be the one.”

  I laughed; he grabbed my arm too tight:

  “That’s not a joke.”

  His eyes held some vague strangeness,

  Distant like an animal’s, or like the night—

  The heat maintained

  And we remained on watch, and daily we flew

  Out for flames,

  But we would work and then take time

  In town to drink and laugh and screw,

  One week in four to town we flew—

  How Doug worked so,

  What magic held him, we could not,

  Did not,

  Would not know—

  But I saw change slow take him so.

  Slow then, was not, that brother mine,

  Slow change grew roots and slowly took:

  Something arched and throbbed in him up there

  Atop the mountain high.

  We’d come back fresh

  A week’s furlough:

  Smil
es, tales of women, wine and song,

  Cartons of tailor-made cigarettes,

  Ready for three more weeks of flights

  And lightening strikes…

  So slow then,

  Our visits were received without

  The smiles we were accustomed to;

  We stayed at base camp more and more

  Until we stopped, almost forgot,

  That 2K path once worn so smooth by our work boots.

  And after just four months,

  No laughter rang out loud and clear—

  His advice failed to reach us.

  He didn’t want to teach us,

  Our prophet that we’d all once held so dear.

  His aspect became clouded.

  His very skin stained somehow pale.

  His eyes grew big like eyes of owls’,

  But without the owls’ spark.

  His voice moved from a comfort sound

  To little more than quiet growl.

  After that fall,

  The weather cool and wet and safe and

  Towers closed, he left

  Without a note, a word, a firm hand shake,

  Without a trace,

  And Rick and Gerald

  And myself, all puzzled and confused,

  Often asked each other what we’d done

  To turn him so—

  We did not know—

  We could not know,

  But wondered if being lone in forest dark

  For four straight months had somehow

  Hollowed out his soul

  But, really, we could never know.

  Now is 07 and I can no longer fight the flame.

  I now teach younger, stronger men,

  As he once taught us same,

  But he has never once returned a letter or a call.

  20 years of silence: he seems to hate us all.

  Was there some evil forest witch

  That took his away his smile?

  Or with that time spent so alone

  Did he turn screws in his own soul

  And turn it slowly grey?

  I guess we’ll never know,

  It’s past and now passed quite away.

  I still see Gerald, but Rick’s no more,

  A bullet in his brain,

  They found him sitting in his truck,

  Up old Bald Mountain road a ways…

  A frozen statue stained in blood;

  His rig, to axles in the mud;

  He’d called me to go hunting on that day,

  But work was busy, there I had to stay.

  Still Gerald and I do recall

  The times of 84

  When Doug and Rick and Gerald and I

  All lived

  As free as air,

  All one in the same cause

  On old Bald Mountain that still stands

  In my horizon eyes,

  And thoughts of all that happened there

  Never far from my mind…

  I think about it all the time.

  But Gerald and I will not return

  To hunt or fish near that wild knoll,

  For fear of that which stole Doug’s soul

  And took away his smile,

  And drained poor Rick of his sweet

  Blood, and froze it on that trail,

  Might somehow sooth us into trap and

  Hold us there a while,

  And pluck our lives of love

  And leave us lone as empty shells,

  Leave us like living hells…

  Like all that’s dark and mean in Doug—

  So we just stay away…

  Although on some hot summer days,

  When distant smoke makes sunsets grand,

  I almost hear a voice, a whisper from that land,

  Which calls me to that haunted roost,

  To that strange hinterland,

  Like hooks well set it tugs me slow,

  A constant pull, a distant hand.

  I turn my back on that feint call

  And try to just forget it all,

  And try to just forget it all.

  But always and forevermore

  Like sunset it will reappear

  And I will fight its dark whisper

  That ever-tries to draw me near.

  Autumn in Alberta

  Autumn in Alberta

  The moon a harvest peach

  The wheat dust thick in atmosphere

  Brings moon within our reach

  The obvious reclining

  Of that fervent summer sun

  This northern leaf-filled splendour

  Painted by this short season

  That shortened days have helped to

  Come undone—

  The chill of early mornings

  Splashed with a subtle frost

  Not yet cruel, but too soon

  Heavy highways heaved

  To mogul mounds

  And only really smooth

  Are Tundra frozen

  Ice ways, seasonal

  Ironic byways, that melt

  Back into bleak scrub landscapes

  With April’s fledgling sun

  But now is not the correct time

  For springtime’s meditative thoughts

  Of soft green leaves, of cricket’s songs,

  Of newborn farmer’s crops,

  It’s autumn air that

  Brings my life to fullest harvest breath

  That cool, soon cold,

  Soon last gasp sun—

  The desperation, alienation,

  Understanding that this

  Short-lived beauty is

  Bound by winter’s breathy wheeze

  And by hell’s own fire-blown summer

  Wrapt tight….

  Autumn,

  That brief, crisp sigh

  Of cool dark nights

  And sharp blue skies

  So pleasing to the lung and eye

  For any who have dared to live in

  This, the sparse, far northern clime:

  Alberta autumn time.

  Daybreak with a Swampy Cree

  The day breaks

  continually,

  but only like it does, here, once.

  The horizon is so long it fades

  into the canvas on either side—north, south—

  much as a brush losing its last paint:

  subtle, silent...tragic.

  In February,

  at this singular instant,

  it is so brilliant, so

  much on fire, so

  cold at dawn on this minus 40 sheet.

  The grey-blue snow is transformed into

  a frozen feast of flame: a fiery burst

  of red, orange, yellow, scarlet;

  brighter than blood,

  louder than life,

  more grand than creation,

  more powerful than water,

  hotter than-

  quicker-

  more....

  The prairie sunrise, in the frozen north,

  can not be worded

  for it holds its own visual-spiritual lexicon.

  My friend, a Swampy Cree, and I

  just stand in ice-packed parking lot

  and watch it through our frozen breath

  as our frail lashes join as one.

  We don't try to put it into words,

  just nod,

  it being far too cold to stop too long,

  and then we slowly trudge along

  into the frozen

  morning fire.

  Lonely Crocus

  Lonely crocus pokes sleepy head through

  shallow snow adding purple to

  low landscapes of dead

  tufted grass and sugar-cube ice.

  This open-eyed optimist

  will too soon wither as,

  in the north, winter holds on tight:

  Spring is slow to grow.

  Lonely Platelets

  Lonely platelet
s nowhere float

  circling slowly down the North Saskatchewan.

  These round patties, their only hope

  a motionless winter

  and death with April's struggling sun.

  Like them, I wander,

  nowhere going.

  It's late, and dark, and cold:

  These frozen streets,

  at night,

  can swallow.

  I go down, underneath,

  to the "warmth" of the subway,

  where my friend—the pay phone—dumbly waits as always.

  People here are drunk, and stoned, and unhappy:

  good company.

  I call and get a machine's version of you.

  I leave some trite, sappy message...

  contrary to my present feelings,

  contrary to my lonely, bursting heart.

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  Bangkok, what the fuck happened?

  Sat at the Bar

  Sat at a bar

  Late last night

  Where my buddy met

  His second wife

  She’s working there again

  A call girl of sorts

  Calling her sad siren’s song

  Into the lonely Patpong lane

  To lure tragic, fat punters

  My buddy’s moved east

  With wife number three

  And I don’t think

  I’ll tell him what’s left

  As wife number two

  Seems broken right through

  With a vacancy

  That might not ever be relieved.

  Sunday Morning

  Sunday morning and three weathered and junk-tired whores

  Sit near enough me

  (And my daybreak, morning tea)

  So I can smell the differences between their beer and whisky

  They try to charm

  But even they know they are kidding no one;

  They know that an hour earlier,

  While still under the mask of night,

  Their chances were much better

  A mixed bag of lady, but all full of the pretence of nonchalance:

  All care about themselves,

  Are ripe with their own fruits of sadness,

  Have been stolen from and been thieves,

  Have been shattered and torn,

  Have been used up by white trash and carelessly

  Tossed aside for something fresher and younger,

  And tighter and younger.

  None will die old,