Mythos & Marginalia

life notes; flaws and all

  • feel the potential

    Before a garden is a garden, it is just dirt.

    Indeed, the remains of last year’s efforts may be apparent in the dry and dead foliage shrivelled, sorry, and waiting for spring clean-up. And all your garden tools have been stored away, powerless, while favourite perennials lay latent beneath the surface.

    It’s when the bulbs begin to show through the soil that you realize the promise that a garden holds.

    A garden must be planned. Whether floral or vegetable, you’ve got to consider the Sun’s daily impact and where your plantings will prosper. 

    You’ve got to plant a seed, if only metaphorically. With that you can imagine the succulent taste of tomatoes fresh from the vine, herbs you will use in favorite recipes, and the scent of yet unplanted flowers that will fill your yard, and your mind.

    A visit to a greenhouse or garden centre inspires, as do the seeds propagated indoors months back. You can feel the potential as certain as you can see what is happening.

    A garden is a gift you give to yourself. Naturally, it requires sunlight and water (as we, as humans, do). Enrich the soil with compost before you dig and dredge the various beds in those corners and crevices of your yard now lifeless, and longing for attention. 

    Above all, patience is required through the coming seasons.

    A garden keeps you grounded through those summer months. The season allows for travel and trips to farmers markets, festivals and cultural events, but you always return home. The garden welcomes you as it does the birds, bees, and butterflies.

    A commitment, the garden keeps you caring about what is important: growth.

    Warmer evenings, hot nights, blissful mornings and summer shade are all ahead of us. Now, the garden is pretty much dirt, possibility, and something to look forward to.

    © 2026 j.g. lewis

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  • poem in your pocket

    Promised Chance

    Friendships are formed over time, 

    over coffee, over commonalities. 

    Patience is required of a relationship, 

    one more subtle than inhabited by 

    colleagues or neighbours. 

       The intimacy is greater than 

       those whom we speak with 

       and them not spoken of.

    Our outward signs of friendship are 

    contractual sides of a story continually

    writing itself in time; each chapter

    develops character and setting, 

    without plot. The narrative evolves.

       It is far from transactional.

    A rightness of values, disciplined 

    morality respected, never  

    abandoned, for a promised chance 

    at discovering a deeper meaning. 

       Never subliminal. 

       There is nothing subtle about it.

    © 2026 j.g. lewis

                       APRIL 30 

    POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY

    Celebrate poetry by selecting a poem, 

    carrying with you throughout the day

    and sharing it with family, friends, cab

    drivers, co-workers, your favorite yoga

    teacher, barista, physician, cobbler, or

    panhandler on the street. Strangers will 

    smile, children may well clap, and you

    might even get the occasional smile or

    laugh. Whatever you do, however you

    dare, this is a day to show the world

    how poetry cares.

         You may already have a favourite poem,

         but I offer you this in case it’s not handy.

                                                      j.g.l.

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  • sure to please


    Midnight snack or simple meal, a sandwich is 
    a sandwich: the real deal. Handful of goodness 
    inspired by hunger, crafted with care and what is 
    available in the fridge. It takes no culinary flair.

    Deli counter craving, varied ingredients form
    a connection. Stacked between two slices of bread: 
    fresh-baked artisanal, even common supermarket 
    selection, on the right day, a taste near perfection.

    Roasted chicken, crispy bacon and cheese, lettuce,
    tomatoe, mayonnaise; toasted crust sure to please. 
    Ingredients: fixings, so to say. Any sandwich worth
    its salt satisfies on this, or any, day.

    However an appetite sated, it is mainly up to you. 
    Lunch box delight, choice from a takeaway menu,
    even childhood favourites of peanut butter and jam.
    A sandwich always fills a void, whenever it can.

    © 2026 j.g. lewis

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  • twilight

    Edge of darkness,
    dusk signals the forthcoming night.

    Fears settle, or are intensified.

    As a child, my Mother called out my name;
    a sign the evening was done.

    City streetlights had just come on,

    it was time to come home.
    Dusk, then, signalled security.

    Twilight marked the beginning of the night for a teenager.

    Time to spread seeds, share youthful conquests.

    Adolescent dreams came alive.
    Turn off the headlights.

    We grow up at night,

    learn the pleasures of another human’s body;
    young women (or older)

    who will, in many ways, turn you

    into an man.

    By nature, and by choice, you discover how
    your body fits into another.

    After dusk you learn

    the secrets of the night. And responsibility.

    Morning’s light will bring a new reality.
    It was not always what your mother said it was.

    © 2022 j.g. lewis

    April is Poetry Month

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  • only arbitrary

    So much to be answered for. Our expansive experience,

    over months, quarters, decades broken down to moments

    only when you think. Often, we don’t. Memory not always

    faithful, not in hindsight. Affected we are more by what is

    to come, always to be. Unseen. Realization or recognition? 

    Knowing, not beholding, perception rarely accounted for

    as we passively slip down some bothersome rabbit hole of 

    unclassified information. It’s never what we need to know, 

    but absorbed and appreciated for what it is. Trivia: traces of 

    useless facts important only arbitrarily. Knowledge surpasses 

    what we need to know, only when it isn’t so. Truly. Doubts 

    and disbelief are tangible transactions, but only as factored 

    into common denomination, erstwhile realties, utter guesses, 

    undue speculation and assimilation of questionable meaning.

    © 2026 j.g. lewis

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