Costs of living intently rising with greater momentum
than we have experienced in decades. Inflation. A dollar
eroding, daily, hourly, overnight as markets contract or
give way to pressures we have not known; for a while.

Geo-political influences, war we cannot ignore, news
streaming 24 hours a day. It is the way we live. Digitally.
Death toll accumulates; we have been watching the
numbers climb for well over two years now. This virus.

Pandemic focused our psyche on the ebb and flow of
what little we know. Climate change we once ignored,
heat or rain in amounts we have not seen before, in areas
once plagued by drought. We only think we remember.

The earth is changing, and we with it. How can we not?
Efforts all for nothing, we take stock of what we have and
all we have lost. We feel a deficit, financially and morally.
We contemplate circumstances never before considered.

Money is more than our own concern; and concerned
we must be. Drastic shifts of the dollar; our wallet not as
bulky as it once was. Common cents. Pump prices rise,
daily, to record levels. It will again, the costs of this pain.

So much has been misplaced, most of all this sense of
community. Look around. Do you see the abundance of
friends and colleagues we used to know? How did they go?
How can we afford to sustain the inevitable unavoidable?

© 2022 j.g. lewis

   Summer doesn’t speak;
it whispers a conscious melody
to high-heeled fashionistas with open toes,
sunburnt brats with runny noses, and
old men who know
evening air is sweeter
when dusk has had its way.      Humidity.
Sweat of the glass,
                                 Tangueray and tonic
will take away the pain,
Mosquito bites, lonely nights
sitting on an ever- creaky veranda,
Dinah Washington crackles from the speaker.
Suddenly you appear. . .
   Any other day
flowers stand taller, like
the younger women strolling by,
getting younger by the day.
Watch them
                    and wipe
the perspiration from your brow;
the once-crisp handkerchief has
soaked up many nights of lustful thoughts.
Old men just grow older,
the meaning comes with age.     Humility.
Summer lasts as long
as a savings account wastefully spent.
Then you are gone. . .
   Over time
most of the flowers will perish
well before first frost,
mostly from neglect.     Naturally.
We will all grow tired
of looking at them,
                         or forget the beauty.
Our minds go to other places.
Yet summer, in its capricious wisdom,
will breathe again
to those of us who will listen.
To young women
and older men.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

Watercolour painting by Kevi Remple

*selected lyrics from Invitation.
Written by Bronislaw Kaper/Paul Francis Webster,
the jazz standard was memorably recorded
by Dinah Washington in 1962. Has desire ever
been captured more sensually in a musical state?

We take all dreams with a grain of salt.
Emotions take a licking, worse for wear,
bruises bear witness to the challenge
of friendship.      At any age,
infatuation infects common courtesy,
unknown among misfits and hangers-on,
in the desire to be together.
     You are among friends.
Among thieves, even casual acquaintances,
honestly it is difficult to see the honesty
apparent in our everyday strife.
     But it is worth looking for.      Affinity.
     Fragile masculinity, genuine femininity,
     no distinction, no distractions, imitation
knows no limitation, Humans being human, as
tricky as it is, as finicky as it was, we all
want to belong, It is the people in our lives
                    that make our lives worthwhile.

© 2022 j.g. lewis

Undetermined hesitancy,
well past procrastination, yet far less than wasting time.
Waiting is less a function and more of a state.
It is not stillness; for that to occur the mind must settle, not
impervious, but free to allow thoughts in. And out.
Then become silence.
We, then, are waiting, knowing time will tick on anyway.
If we can stop even for a moment, to simply breathe,
we can find perspective.
It is searching for something meaningful
from something meaningless.
We seek further meaning,
knowing our lives are deeper than our pockets.
We understand there is greater nutrition in a shared meal,
that Friday will arrive each week, and a bicycle and a car
each have a purpose.
We wait; believing home has nothing to do with boundaries.
For our past to catch up with our ever-present worry, for
today to be the gift we were told it would be,
the future must unfold as it should.
In searching for this equilibrium,
have we become stuck in the balance?
Our mind is occupied.
Waiting.
We know there are people, who miss us as we miss them,
and we wait in one space thinking that one person may find us.
Waiting may be a reminder
they are not coming.
As we wait, we attempt to determine if
our response is an action, or a reaction.
We know inaction.

© 2019 j.g. lewis

I went out last night to look up at the full moon, but instead spent my time looking for it.
   The Strawberry Moon was to be a Super Moon, appearing brighter and closer than normal. The Strawberry Moon sort of ushers in summer, and the weather last night was warm enough to signal that it might be true.
   I took the elevator up to the rooftop of our building with the intention of sitting and staring for a while.
   Stillness, under the full moon, was not to be.
   The moon was not visible to me.
   Toronto’s growth continues upwards. Cranes and condominiums are everywhere, all the time. I notice this daily. Finding a patch of sunlight in downtown Toronto is becoming more difficult as the buildings get taller and the shadows grow longer.
   I had not noticed, or paid attention to, how the views had changed at night, until last night.
   The spot I intended on spending time in the moonlight — the exact spot where I stood and photographed the September 2015 lunar eclipse in all its glory —  would not serve me well.
   My view of the moon has been blocked. Residents of buildings that have been built over the past five years can now see the sights while I can no longer can.
   Not from here.
   I thought further through the night, the type of thinking a full moon can force you to do, and I began to thinking about where I am and questioning what I was doing here.
   I long to sit under the big sky and watch the moon, unobstructed, on a hot summer night.
   Maybe it is time I should become more mindful about doing that.