Friday 25 January 2019

Lowland journey

12.17
What does it mean to dream of racing fingers stretching
along like train tracks?

Last night i fell asleep with no woman and no tv
for the first time in years.
I wake feeling sick, and lie with my eyes closed,
knowing i'll never make it to Aberfeldy.

Stepping out onto the quiet street by the cemetery,
i turn nextdoor and order egg and sausage,
slathered in brown sauce which gets all over my hands.

Lot was the brother of Mordred.
Lothian is hidden in the valley,
lowlands, skin beneath the belt
of cities. this land's been farmed for
2000 years. the spent mash is good for cattle.

Collin and Linda pick me up on the outskirts
of Edinburgh, retired traffic cop & shop-keeper,
first hitch and after waking late, I'm sweaty.
I was never going to make it to Aberfeldy, stinking
of jet fuel and orange juice from concentrate.
Though they are headed to Pencaitland,
after twenty minutes of old coal mines and salt-water and ships
from the Black Sea, they drive me down into the green valley,
along the winding roads with one lane and wet asphalt,
until we reach the distillery.

I think it is closed. Nothing moves.
but I send them off with a smile,
it isn't their responsibility.
we snap a photo. a worker walks out,
and seeing my sign asks to take a picture.
says I'm the first to hitch here, which feels hardly true,
since it only took 1 ride.

Entering the place is shadows and chilly,
a dram of blended is poured out
and i deposit my jacket and oversized pack in the backroom.

Alistair receives and guides me, a nervous smile,
thin and tall, professional but as if to obscure something,
I grow to trust him and his love of detail throughout the tour.
The rule of 3s brings a smile to his face and mine too
as it is a sacred number.

This place uses 80,000 liters of water a day.
I'd never heard of the whiskey before. Glenn Kinchie.
in old photos of the workers, eyes and smiles glazed with their pours of whiskey
taken before and after work each day,
there is a dog, Bruce, who worked there too, hunted the vermin chasing after
sweet byproducts. Bruce came and went. but was always bruce.
________________________________________________________
Allistair warmed up by the end,
he just returned from 12 yrs working in cognac country,
didn't mean to be back, but
here he is.
 His coworkers kept walking up to warn him to watch the shop
as we sat at the bar and drank,
he waved them off,
said it must be mighty hard to do what I do,
that is with unions and all that.

When he unlocked the back to fetch me cardboard
for a hitching sign, everyone smiles, Michael who offers private tours
to and from Edinburgh tells me just to hop in the bus
and not say nothing, rather than me walking the 3 miles into town to hitch a ride
"It's christmas after all"

So i sit back into a leather char with poetry, try
to buy another dram, have the money waved off--
this country's full of hidden valleys,
grey-green rivers and glenns, berns feeding underground springs,
even as the sun sets,
what an overflowing!

Carla is the one who pours me a few more whiskeys,
she works in the distillery during holidays,
father a farmer, she is studying law in Aberdeen,
through the distillery you can hear her
light voice playing over those of foreigners
talking about breakfast whiskies, she wants advice
for going to the isle of skye next holiday.

I wander out onto a road sloping up the hill,
it will go on forever, past farmhouses with busted roofs,
and fields of barley, and the trickle of rivers.
An old phone booth is overgrown with ivy.
A woman emerges out of the mist with a baby carriage.
In the distance, a small bright moon overlooks a stand of trees.
I could wander that road for eternity in the light dust of early december snow.

Michael is a friendly chap,
collecting pension and driving a few days on the side.
he takes his wife to the same hotel in cuba every year.
As I hop out, he smiles, and tells me to go for luxury.
After dropping the group who contracted him to drive in the denseness of the city,
he drops me at my doorstep in the South, as he lives only a few blocks away.
I am glad to be with is fat hands in the darkness,
I am glad to not know what will happen tomorrow.

I am abuzz from this first day,
from the 6 whiskies, the moonlight.
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Clynelish 14-- waxy, full for a speyside, still sweet but not flatly so, brown sugar, mulch, pear.
Cragganmore distillers edition-- rich port finish, plum and bitter herb body, a washing of salt
Daluaine 16-- heavy tannins, short and sweet, nutty, simple
Glen Kinchie 12-- lemon on nose, honey, grass, pucker & dryness in the finish
Glenn Kinchie Distillers Edition-- almost no nose, purely brown sweet and simple, body is complicated, a little peat, muddied with sherry sweetness, still some citrus flavors, but overall quite round and dark while still remaining a light lowland
Singleton 15-- high rye, honey and wheat, something roasted, raisins