Chez Victor
I was about ten years old when Chez Victor opened
A fine French chef in a greasy spoon on Davie Street
My dad took Thursday afternoons off
Every now and then I’d go along
When school got out
On his trip to the University record library
Where he’d select the next few albums to serenade Sunday
We’d glide into downtown in ragtop cool
MGBing overbridge into urban madness
Inside this grimed café a door opened into Paris
They would flower into Brel and Becaud
Sliding into a fraternity of francophone
We would feast on boeuf bourguignon
Drink Mouton Cadet
Of which I’d sip
Surreptitiously
But with the borrowed insouciance
Of the 14th arrondisement
Whose child I wasn’t
But might have been
Traveling across possibilities into fractured reality
Quietly soaking up Gallic truth
Like the French bread in the broth
At the bottom of the bowl
David Trudel © 2013
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