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:
Sm
iles, 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 platel
ets 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,