Emanuel Melo torontonian azorean writer

Sete Cidades (photo from my 2016 visit)

As I get ready to return to São Miguel for a May visit, I remembered that in November of 2011, after meeting the poet Gabriela Silva from the island of Flores, who had come from the Azores to give a talk at the University of Toronto to a group of students, I was so moved by listening to her that I wrote a reflection based on that encounter, and posted it, first in Portuguese and then in English  in May of 2016, the year that I started my blog.

It’s now May, 2026 and on this tenth anniversary, the time has come for a return visit to São Miguel, Açores. Chegou a hora de voltar.

Lagoa do Fogo

Miradouro de Santa Iria

Viewing Vila Franca do Campo from the Ilheu

Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres procession in Toronto, May 15, 1966 *

The annual Festas do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres has been part of Azorean religious and cultural life for over 300 years (1700-present), and it was celebrated for the first time in Toronto on May 15, 1966 by the thousands of Portuguese immigrants who had left their island home but who had not forgotten the importance of this annual feast.

I have already written and shared my father’s photographs of the first procession that took place in Toronto and also the photographs he took the following year, in 1967

I would like to acknowledge the 60^th anniversary date by reposting some of my father’s photographs documenting this historical moment in the Portuguese Canadian diaspora as well as write about an intimate story that links the festa from the Azores to the one held in Canada that first year.

My mother and I were still living in São Miguel in 1966 and while she sent my father photographs (photographer unknown) of the procession that took place in the city of Ponta Delgada, he sent her photographs of the first procession that took place in Toronto.

I find it extraordinary that my parents, in their thirties, apart from each other for three years with only weekly letters between them, decided to share these photographs with each other. It would have been so much simpler now, so immediate; a quick photo taken and sent on WhatsApp, not to mention a live video chat, the way we do things now. They had to mail these photographs, received weeks after the event, but still connecting them meaningfully to one of the most important celebrations of Azorean life and as a reminder of their love for each other.

My family connection to the devotion of Senhor Santo Cristo is deep and bridges the decades. My father became a member of the Irmandade do Senhor Santo Cristo until his death, giving of his time each year as a volunteer to set up the outdoor church lights and displays around St. Mary’s. He also carried the andor in procession many times until he was no longer able to participate.

Over the years, I, too, have seen the procession of Senhor Santo Cristo both in Toronto and in the Azores, forever linking my experiences of religious devotion with family life.

As an altar boy at St. Mary’s church I was in the processions of the early 70s. In this photograph, I am the first boy in the forefront of this picture from 1970.

My father, who had come to Canada in 1965, saw that first procession at St. Mary’s in 1966, along with my paternal grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and my two little cousins, who had all been the first of our family to come to Canada. My grandmother once told the story of how everyone cried with emotion that day, remembering their family members still in the Azores, and how there was no filarmónica band to play the Hino do Senhor Santo Cristo. As a substitute, a gramophone record of the hymn was played from the back of a truck accompanying the procession through the streets of Toronto.

Father Alberto Cunha

outdoor Mass in 1966, during the sermon

outdoor Mass in 1967

Mariano Rego * carrying the processional lantern, my father the second man behind him, in 1972 (photographer unknown)

*I am grateful to Manuel Geraldes, a long-standing member of the Comissão do Senhor Santo Cristo, who identified his father, Antonio Andre Geraldes as the man in my father’s 1966 photograph of Senhor Santo Cristo, carrying the andor on the left side. He was president and one of the founders of the festa, along with Manuel Arruda, Tony Vaz, Manuel Ferias, Anton Esckia, and a few others.  Father Alberto Cunha, in the same photograph, came to St Mary’s in February of 1966 and was an instrumental figure in promoting the festas of those early years.

*The statue of Senhor Santo Cristo was donated in 1964 by Mariano do Rego, a famous Portuguese guitarist, in gratitude and thanksgiving for a cure of his wife’s grave illness after praying to Santo Cristo. Thanks to his act of generosity, the Azorean immigrant community was able to have a bit of home recreated in the diaspora. More about his life can be watched on this Gente da Nossa video.

Leonor Patricio was a friend of Mariano who recorded a record to raise money for the construction of the Chapel of Senhor Santo Cristo at St. Mary’s Church.

From Jorge da Costa I learn that the statue of the “Ecce Homo” gifted by Mariano Rego was made in Braga, Portugal, that the andor (litter for carrying the statue in procession) was constructed by senhor João Guden, born in Ponta Delgada, and that  Senhor Liberal Medeiros of Liberal Jewellery in Toronto since 1970 was responsible for the ornate treasures of jewels that adorn the statue of Senhor Santo Cristo (the Esplendor, the crown of thorns, the scepter, and the medalhão).

Suzette Arruda-Santos was less than two months old when her mother Maria Olguete Ventura Arruda sewed the first Guião (processional banner that leads the procession). It was used for many years until it was replaced.

Many thanks to Manuel Geraldes, Jorge da Costa, who have been intimately connected with the festas since their youth. Also, thanks to Leonor Patricio, and Suzette-Arruda-Santos for sharing information with me on my Amantes dos Açores FaceBook post. They all have oral history which deserves to be written down as part of the story of Senhor Santo Cristo in Toronto.

The chapel of Senhor Santo Cristo at St. Mary’s Church, Toronto

Antonio Cabral de Melo in 1966

My father had this postcard size image in his car as a sign of his devotion to Senhor Santo Cristo.

In memory of my parents, Antonio and Berta de Melo, and of their devotion to Senhor Santo Cristo

Em 1966 a festa do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres  foi celebrada no dia 15 de maio. Foi também a primeira vez celebrada em Toronto, Canadá pelos imigrantes dos Açores que fizeram parte da nossa diáspora. Neste ano eu ainda vivia em Ponta Delgada com a minha mãe enquanto o meu pai já tinha partido da ilha. A minha mãe enviou-lhe fotos que comemora o dia da procissão na cidade açoreana e ao mesmo tempo o meu pai enviou as suas fotos da procissão em Toronto. Desta maneira os meus pais ficaram unidos na sua fé e no seu amor pelo Senhor Santo Cristo, apesar da distância que os separou durante três anos antes de nos reunirmos como família. Fico grato por esta singela lembrança que fez parte da nossa imigração e partilho estes registos em memória dos meus pais.

Reposted in Filamentos

My father visited Niagara Falls in September of 1965, the year he came to Canada. These are the photographs I still have in my collection to document his visit. As with all his photographs, on the back, he wrote a description of what the photograph portrayed. It felt so magical to read them as explanations of places I could not imagine when I was just seven years old living in a world without television or other ways of connecting with what existed outside the insularity of my island home of São Miguel.

Years later, when it was my turn to see Niagara Falls with my own eyes, I saw it as a confirmation of what was already familiar to me from the photographs my mother and I received while my father was away.

Skylon Tower

I don’t know if it was my father or if it was me who took this photograph of my mother with my little brother, born in Canada, on one of our trips to Niagara Falls, sometime in the late 1970s.

What I notice about this photo is that, in composition, it could have been me who took it; it could also have been my father. I’m sure I got my love of photography from him and our styles and ways of seeing through the lens of a camera seem to blend into one.

Unlike the 1965 photographs this one has no writing on the back. It’s not even dated. It’s no longer a photograph of an immigrant’s exploration but rather one of arrival and belonging, and looking towards the future. A future which made Toronto our home.

My father at 37 years of age, in 1965

Antonio Cabral de Melo October 3, 2028 – April 21, 2005

In recent years, I have relied with gratitude on the Toronto Public Library for providing me with books that, regardless of where they are located in the city, are sent to my local branch for convenient pick-up upon my request.  It’s a service that recognizes the importance of making books available easily and equitably to interested readers living in Toronto. The public library is the perfect solution to satisfy my need to read something new.

For decades of my life, purchasing books, increasing the size of my own private library, was the joy experienced by the collector in me. But I no longer need to own every book I read. I also don’t have space at home for more. I still buy books, but rarely. For a new book to become part of my personal library, it has to entice me with writing that captivates me enough to want to give it a place of honour in my home.

This is what happened with Carmelinda Scian’s debut novel, Yellow Watch, Journey of a Portuguese Woman. The title may suggest a memoirist journey but it’s a novel written in the form of stories, beautifully interwoven chapters that feel like quilt squares sewn together to reveal the story of Milita Ferreira’s life from a faraway time in the Portugal of the 1960s, starting in Algarve, then later moving to the small village of Amendoeiro, across the Tagus River from Lisbon, and seamlessly continuing forward to the time of immigration to Canada, specifically to the Toronto of the 1970s, and the subsequent decades until the story ends in the late teens of the new century; four decades, as Milita reflects near the end of the novel, “spent at the smithy of life trying to cobble a new me.”

Carmelinda Scian’s details of place and time are rendered masterfully by references to the political and social events that mark the decades all the way from the days of the PIDE, Salazar’s sinister and secret police and their attempts to destroy citizens who went against the state in the smallest ways, to the FLQ crisis in Canada, as the background to lives of poverty, oppression, social conventions, immigrant challenges, and the pursuit of a new life, always linked to the past in an never-ending circular awareness of what has come before and what may lie ahead.

I found an excellent and detailed description of the novel in a Goodreads review by writer Ian Colford and I don’t feel it’s necessary to duplicate here what has already been written so precisely and well by another appreciative reader.

Suffice it for me to add my endorsement of Yellow Watch as a book which will mesmerize through its sparse prose, beautifully crafted without sentimentality and never flinching from raw truth. Carmelinda Scian does not shy away from difficult subjects such as prostitution, abortion, fixed marriages, family violence, and poverty. She handles each with the skill of a surgeon, or an investigative reporter, honest in her revelations but without judgment of the facts, simply allowing us, the reader, to decide how to interpret a person’s life history, in this case, Milita Ferreira. I hope you will get to know her by reading Yellow Watch, Journey of a Portuguese Woman.

The highest praise I can give Carmelinda Scian is that she is a good writer.

Here’s an excellent interview and introduction to Carmelinda Scian in the Malahat Review:  The Truth of Human Experience: Alexandra Handley in Conversation with Carmelinda Scian

University Avenue, Toronto

When my father arrived in Toronto on June 18, 1965, my mother and I were still in the Azores.  That summer, he sent us photographs he took to show us the city that three years later we would call home.

His camera captured images that are now over sixty years old. I’m glad my mother was wise enough to bring my father’s photographs with her when she and I left the Azores. They are a document and a testament of my father’s interest, curiosity, and exploration of the city where he had planned on making a new life for his family.

I already introduced a few of his Toronto photographs when I started my blog in 2016 and I invite to have a look at what I posted then. Now I am including his other photographs.

The ones of City Hall, at Nathan Phillips Square, which officially opened on September 13, 1965, coincidently the month and year stamped on his photographs, places my father perhaps there on that opening day or shortly thereafter.

There’s also a few photos of University Avenue, the Gardiner Expressway, and the railroad tracks with the Royal York Hotel in the distance.

He also witnessed the annual Labour Day Parade that same September of 1965, a parade which is still held in Toronto today. His photos capture the spirit of the union solidarity of the time.

My father did not have a car then, and I’m not sure how he got around to take his photographs; perhaps he walked the city or was taken by car by family or friends.

What I do sense is that he cared enough to use photography as a means to show a city with the same enthusiasm as a modern day Instagrammer, with captions written on the back of each photograph to tell me and my mother what we were seeing.

I am grateful for the preservation of these priceless images that connect me not only to my father, but to the city I have lived in for most of my life.

City Hall

Nathan Phillips Square

My cousins

Old City Hall

University Avenue

A new glass building, wrote my father on the back of this photo

Bellevue Park on Bellevue Ave between Dennison and Wales Ave

Railroad tracks with the Royal York Hotel in the distance

Rail yard

A new building

My father loved cars and was fascinated by the highway

Sick Children’s Hospital

Labour Day Parade

The Dufferin Gate, west-end entrance to Toronto’s Exhibition Place

These photographs have a ghostly look to them, worn out by the vintage of time, but come alive through my father’s immigrant eye.

Antonio Cabral de Melo October 3, 1928 – April 21, 2005

Parque Terra Nostra, São Miguel, Açores

For those who consider the Azores a paradise on earth, a walk through Parque Terra Nostra, on the island of São Miguel, truly transports you into some mythical visual delight of what we imagine a paradisiacal place to be. I invite to visit their website for more information.

My interest in posting about this enchanting park is simply to share a few photos on a foggy, rainy day in Toronto which will hopefully melt the persistent snow of a long winter when we still wait with eagerness for the coming of spring.

To sit for a while in the company of magnificent nature that offers you rest for body and soul.

Achada, São Miguel, Açores

This agapanthus was still mostly in bud in May, 2017 when I came upon it on my walk down to the ocean from the village of Achada. Since then, so much has changed in the world, and in my life, and I wonder if that road still looks the same now. I am looking forward to walking it again this coming May, 2026 and hope that the agapanthus will be there to greet me.

For over twenty years I helped my mother display her presépio and each year she would tell me that it would be her last until finally it was.

However you celebrate the season, I wish you a Feliz Natal and a Merry Christmas filled with peace and joy to you and those you love.

Por mais de vinte anos ajudava a minha mãe a fazer o seu presépio e em cada ano ela dizia-me que sem dúvida seria o seu último Natal até que finalmente chegou o dia previsto.

Seja como for a maneira que celebra a quadra natalícia, desejo-vos um Feliz Natal repleto de paz e alegria.

Berta Pereira Duarte de Melo July 28, 1933-March 17, 2025

My father, Antonio Cabral de Melo at Mary Lake, June 17, 1990

“Tell me about your father.”

So writes Anthony de Sa at the end of More than a King, his Substack essay about his complicated relationship with his father. In a stripped bare confessional of the heart wounded, seeking healing, de Sa shares his father’s flaws as well as his redeeming virtues with his readers and invites them to share their own stories with him.

I admire his honesty, his resolve to see his father, not through revisionist nostalgia, but through the shadows and light which reveals a full human being.

It’s a coincidence that, like de Sa, I also wrote about my father on a November day. My text was inspired by reading José Luís Peixoto’s “Morreste-me”, his own love letter to his father.

Perhaps it’s the commemoration of All Souls’ month that conjures up the memories of our dead fathers and a need to reclaim them through our writing; to restore justice to their name, their goodness even while acknowleding their flaws.

I share my text written in both Portuguese and English, in memory of my father’s journey from the Azores to North America and to the life he made possible for me because of his emmigration.

I thank Anthony de Sa and José Luís Peixoto for their writing on a difficult theme.

I hope many sons and daughters will find some threads of their own family truths and perhaps a path forward to healing their own wounded hearts.

What I should have told my father before he died: A Reflection on loss and redemption: a leaving (Azores) and an arrival (Canada)

My father, now that you are gone forever, I feel your absence; now that you have left us for more time than I thought possible, I miss you.

While you were alive, I was never able to understand you.  I hid myself from you and you were never able to find me after the day you emigrated when I was still a mere child. On that day, you disappeared from my life and, being little, I didn’t understand the reason why; all I knew is that you had left me alone with my mother: you had abandoned me. How was I, a child, to understand why you had to emigrate?  There were reasons which only the adults knew and could understand.  My mother told me, after I woke up without you by my side, that you had gone and, my world of childhood crumbled in disillusion. You didn’t tell me goodbye, you simply vanished.

And when you returned, after a long absence of three years, I was older; no longer the six year old boy you left behind; I was now nine years old.  I had not seen you for so long that you appeared like a stranger returning from a faraway place, and instead of welcoming you back, I kept my distance.  A few months later, you brought me and my mother to Canada. But only six weeks after arriving in our new country, my mother received a letter to inform her that my grandmother was very ill and needed her daughter. Very quickly plans were made for me and my mother to return to São Miguel. I was heartbroken.  I had spent three years without a father and now I was being taken away from you again.  I know that you cried inconsolably watching us leave but in my mind it felt like abandonment all over again. By the time my mother and I returned to Canada three months later, it felt like it was too late for you and for me, and I just couldn’t forgive you for the perceived betrayal of letting me go for a second time. I rejected you and could not look into your fatherly eyes.

It was only when I turned sixteen that I was able to make some peace with you. Still, during all the time that I grew up and became a man, I never understood that you were right there by my side; that you had returned after your three year absence.  I imagined it as if you had never returned at all because the child in me had never forgiven your absence: the child that I was believed that he had lost his father forever. It is only now, five years after your death; five year without your presence, that I start to see the truth about what happened on that fateful day when you left.  I believed that you didn’t love me because you hadn’t even said goodbye.  But I had never known your side of the story.

Recently, I asked my mother to explain what happened on the day you left.  She told me how you embraced me and cried over me, while I still slept.  You didn’t want to let go of me, on that morning that changed my life forever.  Yet I thought that you had abandoned me by choice.  If only I had seen your tears and felt the warmth of your tight embrace, perhaps then I could have understood and forgiven your leaving; but it wasn’t so, and you paid a heavy price for that act of emigration.  You lost your son who did not understand how you could have just disappeared from his life.

Now that you aren’t with us, I want to tell you that I miss you, that I now see that you had never really abandoned me; that you loved me.  I kept myself emotionally distant from you because I never got over that experience of you leaving me without showing me your sorrow in having to go away.  The child inside of me believed that he had lost his father, but like a good father, you remained by my side, watching me in silence, resigned to pay the price for a crime which you had not committed: the crime of abandoning your son.

I want to thank you for all that you did for me.  Had you not come to Canada, how different my life would have been back there on our island of São Miguel.  You brought me to a land where I was able to have a life full of comfort and opportunities and all of it because of your sacrifice. Forgive me for not recognizing what you did for me while you were with us; forgive me my foolish impression that you had stopped loving me.  I now see that you never abandoned me but, sadly, I distanced myself emotionally from you for most of my life based on a misunderstanding.

Your illness, however, brought me to you in ways that nothing else had before. When you got sick with cancer, it was me who you wanted to take you to all those tedious doctor’s appointments, each one bringing less and less hope that you would survive. I sat with you for countless hours in Princess Margaret Hospital, waiting in silence; you never complained or showed fear about your future. You sat there reading your Portuguese newspapers as if everything was normal.

When the therapy stopped working and there was no further hope of your recovery, in those last months when you lay on the sofa, unable to walk, I came to see you often. I sat with you and you smiled warmly and it brought me comfort. You became like a helpless child and I helped you get dressed, I held a urinal container in my hand while you held on to me so that you would not fall; when you no longer had the strength to get up, I wheeled you into the bedroom.  You were always quiet and never complained.

Once, in the middle of the night, my mother called for help while I slept in the next room.  You had soiled yourself and she needed help in cleaning you.  We undressed you together in silence.  I removed your grey undershirt, soaked at the back.  I looked down on your naked body, helplessly flat on the bed, unable to move.  It killed me to see you so vulnerable.  I watched my mother try to make you comfortable but your face betrayed a pain you would not speak so that she would not worry about you.

I hated having to do your chores. It should have been you taking care of your recycling and garbage night.  I didn’t want to shovel your driveway or your front steps, I didn’t want to do your grocery shopping; I didn’t want to plan my life around your dying.  I was angry at having to watch you die.  The hurt was infinitesimal.  It was tied up with my feeling for you all my life; our silences, our differences.  I didn’t even know who I was to you.  Do you love me?  I remember thinking as I looked at your fading body. And all the doubts of my childhood came back to haunt me, confusing my adult mind once again.

You then took for the worst during Holy Week and we prepared for your imminent dying.  The doctor gave me the brochure to read so that I’d know the stages of death.  But you did not die that quickly.  On Good Friday you became conscious again and lucid of mind.  You called everyone to come and say goodbye.  On Easter Sunday, I held you from behind while the homecare worker washed you.  When she left, I was alone with you for a few moments.  You asked me to bring you the statue of O Senhor Santo Cristo from the dresser.  You held it in your hands and you kissed the Suffering Christ; and I heard you whisper your remarkable prayer: Dai-me a Vossa Graça. (Give me your grace).  This was your only prayer in your time of need.  And I still remember it today as a testament to your deep and simple faith. This was to be your last day at home.

The next day, I had to accompany you by ambulance to Grace Hospital where you were to die a few weeks later.  We went alone; you and I, in that ambulance passing the streets you would never walk or see again.  My knees were shaken as they wheeled the stretcher into the room where you would spend your last days.  For the remaining weeks that you lingered, I came every morning on my way to work to feed you.  Sometimes you were aware of me.  Once you gave me a big happy smile.  On the last days, you kept your eyes closed while I fed you porridge. I don’t think you felt pain.  You were resigned with your death the way that you were resigned to your life’s joys and disappointments; the joy of having two granddaughter’s that my brother gave you; the disappointment that I didn’t.

When we received the late night call to say that the time had come, we rushed to be with you. I watched your breathing become shallower and shallower until you took your last breath.  It felt unreal to watch you, the man who was my father, die as simply and quietly as you had lived your life:  without fuss.

It’s been five years since that day you died.  I am still trying to recover from the loss of you.  I had lived my life with the belief, false as it was that you didn’t really love me. The impressionable young boy that I was misunderstood your leaving.  But as much as I may have reserved my judgment on your love for me and my love for you, in the end, I think we lived that love, not through words but through the quiet actions and silences of a lifetime, especially those of your last years.

In my mind, I now return to that fateful morning when you left the island.  I close my eyes and think of you again.  I am six years old and you haven’t left.  Now I can smile.

O que eu devia ter dito ao meu pai antes de ele morrer

Pai, agora que aqui já não estás, sinto a tua ausência; agora que já te foste embora, sinto a tua falta.

Enquanto eras vivo, nunca te compreendi.  Escondi-me de ti e nunca mais me encontraste a partir do dia em que emigraste, quando eu era apenas uma criança de seis anos.  Um dia, desapareceste e eu não entendi a razão; apenas sabia que me tinhas deixado sozinho com a minha mãe. Tinhas-me abandonado.

Como podia eu compreender que tinhas de emigrar por motivos que só os adultos sabiam?  A minha mãe disse-me, depois de eu acordar sem ti ao meu lado, que te tinhas ido embora, e o meu mundo de criança desfez-se em desilusão.  Não me disseste adeus, apenas desapareceste.

E quando regressastes, três anos depois da tua ausência, eu já não tinha seis mas nove anos, e em vez de te abraçar de novo, nunca te perdoei a traição da tua partida clandestina.

E quando me trouxeste para o Canadá, rejeitei-te, e nem olhava para os teus olhos de pai amoroso.  Fiquei homem e durante esse tempo todo nunca cheguei a compreender que o meu pai estava ali, perto de mim, que tinhas voltado. Era como se deveras nunca tivestes regressado.  A criança que eu era nunca perdoou a tua ausência.  A criança que eu era perdeu o seu pai para sempre.

É só agora, depois de teres morrido, depois de cinco anos sem a tua presença que começo a compreender a verdade.  Pensava que nunca tinhas gostado de mim, por isso me deixaste.  Mas não sabia a tua história.

Foram as palavras da minha mãe que me fizeram compreender.  Contou-me como me abraçaste e choraste naquela manhã em que eu dormia e tu me dizias adeus e não me querias deixar, naquela manhã que mudou a minha vida para sempre, quando pensei que me tinhas deixado por abandono e não por necessidade.

Se, pelo menos, tivesse visto as tuas lágrimas, se tivesse sentido os teus abraços, talvez tivesse perdoado a tua partida.  Mas não foi assim e pagaste o preço desta emigração.  Perdeste o teu filho que não sabia, que não percebia como foi que tu pudeste ausentar-te de mim.

E agora que já não estás conosco, quero dizer que sinto a tua falta, que soube tarde demais que não me tinhas abandonado, que me amavas.  Perdoa o teu filho que ficou sempre criança, como no dia em que partiste e pensava que me  tinhas abandonado.

Tinha um pai como muitos não têm e não compreendia.  Agora, agora já é tarde, mas quero dizer-te:

Obrigado por tudo o que fizeste por mim.  Se não tivesses vindo para o Canadá, como teria sido a minha vida na nossa ilha de São Miguel? Trouxeste-me para um país onde pude ter uma vida cheia de conforto e oportunidade, e tudo por causa do teu sacrifício.

Desculpa-me nunca ter apreciado o que fizeste. Desculpa-me a minha impressão de que não me amavas. A criança que eu era pensou que perdeu o seu pai, mas como bom pai, estiveste sempre ao meu lado, vigiando-me em silêncio, resignado a pagar por um crime que não cometeste, o crime de abandonar o seu filho.

E o seu filho, sempre à espera do pai que se fora embora, agora é que vê que voltaste, mas só agora, depois de tantos anos, é que reconhece que não me tinhas abandonado.

Pai, agora que já não estás entre nós, penso em ti e sinto a tua falta.  Afinal de contas não foste tu que me abandonaste, fui eu que te abandonei.

Fecho os meus olhos de novo e penso em ti, tenho ainda seis anos e não partiste para o estrangeiro. Agora posso sorrir.

Inspirado pela leitura do livro Morreste-me de José Luís Peixoto

Also posted in Filamentos (artes e letras)

As hortênsias no fim de verão continuam com a sua beleza na Ponta da Madrugada, São Miguel, Açores.

Hydrangea at the end of summer, still beautiful.

Photos taken on a pleasant day in October, 2012.