The greater the body of water, 
the more questionable where a wave comes from.
          Pebble in a puddle, a most obvious start,
a drip from a drop. Ripple resonates, doubles, then triples. 
                        Evermore a pattern.
   The bigger the lake, the more we can see.
   Surge and swell on a monumental ocean 
       changes with the sunset, seaside tide, or a notion.
                  It ends on the shoreline, 
                  from where does it come?
            Unforeseen origin, man-made or natural?
    On the stillest of days, wind hardly a whisper,
    you will notice a rhythm but rarely the source.
             Undertow and currents may alter your course.
True flow you may never know, shining surf leaving you 
in its wake. What will it leave behind for another day?

© 2024 j.g. lewis

April is Poetry Month
you will notice a rhythm

Urban sprawl, now vertically inclined,
sacrificing our skyline.
Everywhere we look, sky-high density,
our common view condensed in an
uncommon sense of overdevelopment
      and zoning changes.
      Our perspective shifts 
as familiar landscapes are altered into
sites we have never before seen, but
will grow to know.
      The population increases, yet
the humanity of it all is diminished.
Progress is never what it appears to be.

© 2024 j.g. lewis

I bought a new bike. Unexpectedly, even accidentally, I decided on the spot; swiftly, decisively, but not at all thoughtfully.
   I usually take more time selecting which chocolate bar to treat myself to than I did this bike.
   The sale price was attractive, substantially reduced, in a store I don’t frequent often. I was there tending to other matters when this shiny bike caught my eye.
   A recognizable and respected brand name was boldly emblazoned on the cross bar, with a card hanging from the handlebars listing the many, many features.
   Normally, or habitually, I would mull over such a purchase, then leave the store and ponder both the merits and need over a few days. I would read up on the brand and research the model with intense interest in each detail. True consideration takes time, I believe, especially when I expect a product to last me years and years, as my other bike did.
   But not this time.
   I surprised myself.
   I bought the bike, as if it was a textbook case of impulse buying, at a time when I didn’t think I needed any sort of retail therapy. I already have enough stuff, but nothing as shiny and fancy as this new bike.
   I haven’t been cycling as much as I should over the past couple of years, although I had been before that. For many years, upon my move to Toronto, I enjoyed a proximity to bike lanes and bike trails where you can, pretty much, get anywhere. Many times, my weekends were spent exploring the city on a bike.
   It is more than transportation. You see things on a bike that you don’t even notice as you whizz by in a car. Cycling, I believe, is a more humane experience. You feel a connection to the road, hands vibrating with the rough pavement beneath the wheels, as you move at your own pace. It is a tactile experience.
   I took a tumble a few years back. It knocked me senseless, scratched up my arms and legs, smashed a decent pair of sunglasses and cracked the helmet I was wearing at the time. Genuinely feeling the pain, I even went to the hospital emergency room to have my head checked, fearing concussion (or worse).
   I was a mess.
   The incident left scrapes and scabs on my cheek, chin, and nose that proved I was up to something. They took weeks to disappear.
   The scars on my psyche have taken even longer to heal.
   It took a while for me to climb back on the bike that summer. I can’t even remember last year.
   Traffic has truly become a concerning clusterfuck these days in downtown Toronto. Bike lanes have changed, some even eliminated because of all the cranes and construction in the core area. Motorists are notoriously impatient and I’d been hearing too many times about accidents (and deaths) of cyclists.
   This is a dangerous city (in so many ways) and even the route to the safer lakeshore trails can become cluttered and confusing. You’ve got to keep your eyes wide-open. Bicycle versus automobile is not an experience I wish to experience; and there have been several close calls.
   Yet, I wasn’t even thinking about that with the shiny new bike standing before me on the store’s sales floor. All I could feel was my intoxicating need to own it. Right then.
   A new bike for me is now, and has always been, inspiring.
   From the time I learned to ride, all those decades ago, a bicycle has always meant freedom and adventure. Like a kid, I stood in the store on Sunday momentarily dreaming of the glorious trips here and there throughout the city; mindful, of course, of traffic.
   I believe the new bike will inspire me again to get back on the saddle and participate in an activity I have enjoyed my whole life. Of course, I didn’t think about all this at the time of purchase, but I have a great deal since.
   Now I can travel as swiftly as my thoughts.

© 2024 j.g. lewis

view obstructed by silence 
mind stimulated with a promise of progress
 
patience knows the pain of uncommon effort
not quite meeting expectations
 
occasionally pieces fit
more often by luck not skill
 
a pattern is not distinct
misinterpretation defies logic
 
any valid solution thwarted by
an inability to see the complete picture 
 
 

© 2024 j.g. lewis

Familiar lines on the sidewalk, in many places, have worn away.
   We see few masks haphazardly discarded along the path, and fewer still covering the faces of people we pass by. Yet, there are still occasional reminders on signs instructing us of the necessity for physical distancing, or to wash your hands and be respectful of others.
   We are in this together, a common refrain a few years back, is still a phrase you see now and then.
   How much attention do we still pay to the message?
   It was four years ago a global pandemic settled onto this continent. A state of emergency was issued in some U.S. states, across Canada, and much of North America went into total lockdown.
   Mandatory stay-at-home orders were issued. Our homes became our workplace for many of us, except those working in what were deemed essential services (and the definition of what was ‘essential’ was both questioned and expanded).
   Isolation was required. The fears spelled out in government health warnings affected us all whether we paid attention or not. Coronavirus was the initial term used in the global warnings. By the time it was identified as COVID-19, it had become even more of a deadly threat to humankind.
   Hindsight allows us now to look back on how devastating the virus was to local and global economies. We still, four years on, cannot define how much of an impact it has been on financial markets because it reverberates to this day. The term pre-pandemic is a chronological period news reports express regularly as a point of reference we still wait for business or employment numbers to return to.
   There are continual reminders of our recent societal devastation. As we walk on by the signs or lines on the sidewalk, still unsure of where we are headed, do we truly remember what we went through?
   We don’t have to think that hard to recall how we lived in survival mode, as we masked up, washed our hands raw, and limited our personal contact to small bubbles of family and friends.
   How easily can you think back on the isolation and actual trauma of it all?
The latest official numbers show total COVID-19 cases in Canada reaching 4,936,603 as of yesterday. The count currently rises about 3,000 a week as new strains of the virus are discovered or mutate. Total deaths in this country, as of March 5th, have been pegged at 58,560 which is, in actual fact, a population larger than the city I grew up in.
   Our health-care system has been crushed — organizationally and morally — under the weight of this damned virus. Governments seem to have stopped caring (I know my province of Ontario certainly has) about COVID in the same way they stopped announcing the daily death counts we lived with all those months ago.
   We live now with a more silent fear that comes alive each time I hear the wet cough of a stranger in a shopping mall on a day when I decided not to wear a mask. I keep a supply of masks on hand, but seem to forget about them until such reminders. I, like most everybody else, still have many small bottles of hand sanitizer in the car, on the desk, or at the bottom of a purse or packsack.
   Sanitizing your hands has become as normalized as getting a booster shot for the original COVID-19 vaccination. I’ve had four or five subsequent shots; it has become such a continual process in my health care regime, that the numbers are less impactful than the necessity.
   We also don’t hear the rampant public opposition to vaccines that we used to. Perhaps because the disbelievers who once protested so loudly have since succumbed to the virus. Or did they come to their senses?
   Did we?
   As a society, are we any wiser?
   I would certainly like to think so. After all, we are still in this together.

© 2024 j.g. lewis