We tire of unpredictable weather, the damp morning chill, wet socks and lost mittens. Winter keeps reminding it is not through with us.
We have suffered long enough.
The streets are tired and dirty and the time change only makes things darker in the morning.
We need a brighter view.
We need, now, the renewal that comes with spring.
03/20/2023 j.g.l.
Progress comes less from planning than participation.
Dreams and wishes require action and attention.
Start moving.
03/19/2023 j.g.l.
If we wait too long
for the stars to align, for
some kind of hope, or
some kind of sign,
if we let our lives hang on
still-bated breath, we will
forever wonder
what is still to come
or what we have left. If we
don’t own the moments,
or make them our own,
will we ever feel like
we’ve made our way home?
If we can’t be honest
with others, and especially
our selves,
can we ever explain why
or how
we once felt?
If we wait too long, it
may never arrive.
Stop waiting,
start doing,
start feeling alive.
© 2016 j.g. lewis
I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.
j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.
It was never for the night, but only
for the summer. My seventeenth
summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t
have happened, because it did.
You with a past
I would certainly become a part of,
and I collecting stories. An identity.
At seventeen. You took a part of that;
of all, or whatever, went forward.
What I have become.
Bones are formed through experience,
shaping us emotionally, physically, and
psychologically. Down to the soul.
You were there. There I was,
not knowing what to expect, and you
expecting nothing but honesty.
I didn’t question your motives, nor did I
question mine. Age was not important,
you said, nor was intent.
There was a difference.
Seventeen years. but only one summer.
July heat, the scent of patchouli,
sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating.
I tasted the moon on your breath,
and witnessed the clouds in your eyes.
A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and
your impatient need to get over
the emotions. You talked about it.
I could only listen, or try, to understand.
At seventeen I could not know.
Yet. I would learn. Eventually.
In times of give and of take, we took
consciously. Each of us. Never a moment
of mixing the beginning up with the end.
We knew. I wouldn’t ask;
at seventeen you don’t. Of course,
I remember fireflies, the music, touch,
and the sense and secrets we rarely
acknowledged. Not enough time. Only
one summer. It was close, something
I had never had before, but it was not
friendship. A friend you would see again.
Not only for a summer.
©2018 j.g. lewis
“It isn’t all it seems at seventeen”
-Janis Ian
