Male Travel With H.G. Wells

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello reader,

Got the male mind?

I once earned a few bucks writing a piece on the history of concrete. This after I told an editor I had toured a cement making plant along the Fraser river while on holiday. He said people didn’t want to know about a manufacturing plant, but then I got him to agree that cement history was OK. What made me laugh, at the time, was a woman telling me her husband visited such plants whenever they went on vacation.

Well, dear reader, if your husband was a tourist to Woking and London, what might be his perceptions be, both for nature parks and big cities? I have yet to write a long travel piece, but I did writes some long male-viewpoint travel poems, as part of my War of the Worlds tour.

First, you might take your man off to see the countryside 

Horsell Common Today

At last, an English common! 

In the books of my youth

Rupert Bear and Brock the Badger

are forever flying kites and finding adventure.

Horsell Common is huge and sprawling.

I spend my day zigging around to grasp the scale.

In a field of low heather near a Bronze Age barrow

a boy has lost a toy “Marines” helicopter.

Some open heather and clumps of trees,

fine for the army cadet battle drills of my teens,

is next to a deep, shady wood 

where someone has woven sticks to make a dome shelter.

The wood has wide earth trails for equestrians,

and medium orange trails for bicyclists and families,

with tire-wide marks from dog leashes

crossing narrow forest paths.

An extended family of East Europeans is picnicking

on sloping sand while their children build sandcastles.

Of course the Martian’s sandpit is still there,

but they don’t know it was Martian.

The pit today slopes to a pond in a low wooded land

with steep sides. I find two swings.

The kids who tied the ropes are probably adults now.

Overlooking the sand is a giant’s polished carved bench,

a log from another century. 

And below the road to Leatherhead

are straight trees, tall and wide, covered in ivy.

Off the trail, where kids won’t find it, 

is the broken body of a badger.

On this sunny day the kids may think of Robin Hood;

only a grownup would think of dark Martians.

Next, you might drag your man off to the big city

In Central London 

In the twenty-first century in central London

I marvelled at

vast stone shells 

set permanently on city blocks.

Workers, like termites, gut and renovate,

gaining access by a single electro-gate of revolving spokes.

I could photograph the men’s building cranes 

with their Plexiglas cupolas,

but I could not pass into their shells.

From the Thames I prowled through a museum-shell

and spoke with fellow art lovers.

Paints and conversations swirl up

and around the walls. 

I passed on into a shell of London fashion goers.

I could only listen,

fashion-challenged, 

as a reporter interviewed

a braless shirtless lady with an open blazer—

a real live model.

Entering into yet another shell 

I discovered a quiet college.

Ignored by students,

I settled in their cafeteria 

where I propped up my War of the Worlds

next to my big map of South England.

Students love talking

of life, the universe and everything;

of Doctors, and Daleks, and Martians—

But this day felt like summer in a silent college shell.

I finished my tea and trudged off to find the tube.

When you and your man are looking at the River Thames, and you are looking at the pretty waves, maybe his inner boy is looking at the dark boats… and Martians.

Thames River

The Thames is so nice.

The far riverbank is so close.

An ornate bridge looms over shallow water.

The Thames flows stately to the sea.

Along the seawall are lifesavers.

A ship floats moored as a restaurant.

A carrier of tourists chugs, midstream.

I look again.

A great Tripod wades in mid-current.

The cowl rotates as a dark terror, searching.

Tourists are terrified as the Martian regards the bridge.

A ray blasts the left bridge embankment; 

a ray smashes the right,

London 

Bridge is falling 

across the Thames.

Diners rush the gangway.

Carrier flees downstream,

ray streaks out to smash the receding ship.

Steam clouds drift—

I look again.

The Thames is so nice.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

January

2019