“Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”
April 2022
Along the Rio Tejo
He came riding towards me
amplified music for entertainment
eliminating the need for a bell
to remind me I shouldn’t linger in the bike path
which I felt was too subtly marked
for the occasional tourist strolling in subdued awe
of unfamiliar yet unremarkable surroundings.
Slouched forward, his right hand held a mobile phone
which probably showed a map tracking his progress
or maybe a text message from someone important.
I was reminded of my father
or more accurately of a story he told me
riding his bike through open prairies
one glorious autumn day
singing at the top of his lungs
with no one to hear him
this being rural Saskatchewan in 1944,
and while I know this is probably an embellishment
I see him riding with his arms outstretched
looking up with joy to embrace the endless sky
like Meg Ryan in City of Angels
but without closing his eyes.
What if my father had kept on riding west
instead of returning to southern Ontario
to marry the young woman who would become
beloved mother to me and my three siblings
instead meeting a farmer’s daughter
or finding his calling among the Cree?
I certainly wouldn’t be here in Lisbon
scurrying out of the way of bikes
or of anything else for that matter
such infinite coincidences that result
- among a few other things -
in a statistical improbability like me
grateful always to be the son of someone
who looks up to beauty and light.
Aphrodite - Hugo Valentine
January 2022
Goddess of Solana Beach
You were my Aphrodite, beautiful and enchanting
rising from the Del Mar shores in spirited waves
of temper and tenderness
eager to set me down and to mock
my eager illusion of passion.
Each month you’d dance into my world
enticing me to the cliffs, then
receding into the folds of my dreams.
Time and again we begged for just one night
first you, then me, but never us.
Now all that remains is a kiss.