(video was produced in 2010 from slides taken in the Summer of 1983
and uploaded to facebook and youtube)
We rode up to the canyon, Algoma Central Rail.
We got up very early, before the dawn had paled.
My mother and my father, both now near seventy,
And I in my mid-forties, had travelled there to be
Together in that canyon, first time in twenty years.
Time has a way of stilling their worries and my fears.
My brother and my sister, both married and with kids,
Had found a way to please them and pick up on their bids.
But I had very early discovered I was gay.
It wasn't very easy to find my single way.
Of course, I could have married, or given it a try,
But both my folks had told me how wrong it was to lie,
So in my early twenties, I set out on my own,
And though not always lonely, I've always been alone.
We got off in that canyon, Agawa it is called,
And there we shared the beauty of its steep and tree-lined walls.
We savored crystal waters and those slopes of evergreen.
As with other sons and daughters there were things that went unseen.
My father climbed three hundred steps the lookout point to see,
And though his boldness bothered him, I chose with him to be.
It wasn't always so, I thought, for in my younger days
I found myself attracted more to mother's thoughts and ways.
I risked and told my father how he had frightened me,
But he replied, "There's other things, you know, like jealousy."
I pondered what my dad had said the next day on the train.
I searched the bottom of my soul and riffled through my brain.
I couldn't find a single shred of jealousy for him,
Though in the process I encountered memories just as grim.
We rode down from that canyon and somehow things had changed,
My feelings, better sorted out, my thoughts, more rearranged.
Our lives are like a train ride, my parents lives and mine;
There's more than we can fathom as we move along the line.
We all are seeking beauty, yet we see it differently;
One finds it in a flower, another in a tree.
We should not tell each other what beauty we should find;
It isn't in the things we see, you see, it's in our mind.
It isn't so important, then, the cards that fate has dealt,
The thoughts that we've been thinking, or the feelings we have felt.
Important is the fact that we have had the chance to share,
To take the ride together, to listen, learn, and care.
And so I love my parents as our journey nears its end,
For I know the truth is waiting, and it's just around the bend.