A little cold, little wet,
a little tired and yet
I am here. Still,
full of wonder.
The morning chill leaves
little to the imagination
and much less
to hope for.
Expected, perhaps, as it
always is, this time, this
season is only what
we ask of it.
11/21/2024 j.g.l.
The answers are far less certain
than even last week, to all those
perennial questions or solutions
you might seek.
What do you believe, or
what do you believe in?
Come Monday, you have fewer
questions than you had last week.
For a while there are less doubts
in what you believe.
Whom do you believe in,
and who believes in you?
11/18/2024 j.g.l.
We want to know what
we don’t know, or hadn’t thought of,
or forgot.
What mattered then,
or what mattered when, shifts over time.
We notice.
Perception is what you don’t see.
Deception is what know.
You see it differently through your aloneness.
The truth behind a lie,
you question how and why.
It made sense.
Anticipation keeps us waiting
for only so long. Will it matter
if you felt it never did?
© 2021 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.
We’ve all grown up surrounded by advertising.
In print, billboards or placards, or through radio or television – and, now, in any vacant spot they can fill on any digital device you get your hands on – we are bombarded with product and price.
It’s pretty easy to become immune to it all. It has to be especially effective to grab your attention; and only the shocking or extraordinary does.
Good advertising has you reaching for your wallet.
Great advertising pulls at your heart.
There is one particular commercial that sticks out in my mind, especially this time of year.
I remember the first time I saw it in about 2005. With a mother’s voice singing Silent Night, the commercial shows a series of adorable babies, fast asleep. Gentle, serene faces with eyes and mouths twitching ever so slightly, as babies do.
All is calm.
I remember watching, my eyes transfixed. It was generic, non-specific advertising, where you don’t even know it is a commercial for Pampers disposable diapers until after the main message appears on the screen at the end: Peace on Earth.
I know my eyes welled up, then, and every time I saw the commercial in the years following.
I know I remembered standing over my own infant daughter, decades earlier, and realizing all that was beautiful and right with this world.
I know it hits me hard, this time of year, because my child was born a week before Christmas.
Today, and evermore, I wish her Peace on Earth.
Image ©Pampers
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.