Bill Roberts, Poet

A Land Where Chairs on Wheels Don’t Exist

Author: Bill Roberts

Spaniards are the longest lived people on earth

said Enrique, our nimble tour guide,

and who would argue with him, telling us

Spanish olive oil ranked Number One too,

much of it carted to Italy so Italianos

can slap their red-white-and-green label on it.

The Spanish speak four different languages,

each incomprehensible from the other,

making it burdensome for a tour leader

to move around easily and convey knowledge.

But it’s easy to see why the Spaniard lives

so long – he and she walk!  Walk briskly,

everywhere, striding like marathoners,

thinking while ambulatory, only good thoughts,

for frowns are rare, perhaps even forbidden.

The Catholic Church finally gave up

its Inquisitional ways long ago, and cathedrals

are everywhere, offering mass every hour

some days, the godly on strudy bent knees,

defying the church’s supplication to give it

more children, the godly more interested in

the fun part of sex rather than the reproductive.

We did see one rather young fellow in a

mechanized wheelchair, though he seemed

more interested in speed rather than recovery,

probably one of Spain’s many NASCAR nuts.

There is little fault about Spain and the Spanish -

the streets are pristine clean, the highways

uncrowded, maneuverable, the food in great

variety and tasty, the women slim and

fashionable, the men….who gives a shit?

But one fault:  few, very few, speak English.

Imagine that:  we go all the way over there,

toss our dollars at them, and they don’t speak

our language.  Makes you wonder, eh?

Note:  Irene and I are recently back from Spain – Madrid, Toledo, Avila, Salamanca, Zaragoza, Laguardia, Bilbao, and Barcelona – loving every minute of it.  Spain is clean, underpopulated, proud, polite, p0lished, and healthy, both in mind and body.  Immigrants are welcome, to do the unpleasant jobs the natives prefer to hire out.  Think about that a minute.  Their life expectancy is something like 88 years.  So, what’s wrong with us?  Nothing really, and it’s always good to return home, even after a two quick weeks.  We stayed abroad nearly ten weeks once, and I came home, kissed the ground at the airport, immediately went off for a juicy cheeseburger.  Did about the same this time, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Fashion, Food, Health, Human Nature, Humor, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.