It’s not about height
or breadth, or depth.
It is all about perspective.
What limits you?
How far can you see?
To what end do you
appreciate what is in front of you?
Looking back is hindsight
and you have already been there.
Change your point of view.
Look up.
Don’t overlook opportunities.
What are your limits?
09/09/2024 j.g.l.
Secrets are rarely as heavy as
the weight we assign to them.
The gravity of circumspect
plays out, time and again. It is
what we carry as we decide
what crosses, or is held within,
our moral divide.
Sit with it for a while, moved
only when memory comes into
play; last night, or the other, or
any other day.
09/05/2024 j.g.l.
When you are not ready to say
all you need to say, you remain
unable to feel all you are
meant to feel.
Joy, relief, compassion,
beliefs, unobtainable all in the
truest sense. Your solitude, like
a sin, stays locked inside.
Unbidden, personal inquisition
only you can reply to, abiding
precious time.
09/03/2024 j.g.l.
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.
‘If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’
Advice from a panhandler, a regular,
outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go,
tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.
Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat,
hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.
Where she sleeps is often a wonder;
women’s shelter a block over, or congregated
rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.
‘Any spare change, anything helps.’
Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t
look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by.
A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.
More or less.
‘God bless.’
Sight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold
winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than
the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.
Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.
Some other day.
Some other time, the world was different.
So was I.
So was she.
Society does what it does.
We rarely know
who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.
© 2021 j.g. lewis
April is Poetry Month
all poetry all the time
right here
poetry every day
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.