Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away,
another lifetime. They write songs about the city,
in April. I have never been. In any season.
Spring has yet to find its way here,
so Paris awaits.
Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers.
Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we
not see nights from a tiny apartment,
streets below filled with people like us.
Experience I do not yet know, but I desire
to feel the city against your skin.

I have been told one night in Paris
is like a year in any other place. Language
I do not understand, but the art speaks to me.
Culture not found anywhere but Paris.
History unto itself.
Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space,
yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is
the capital city.
Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well.
Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself,
adopted the city, or it him.

Artists, from anywhere, are meant
to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover
from wherever they have lived. You don’t
get that feeling anywhere else.
Or so I am told. I need Paris.
I would write in Paris, I would paint,
perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine
what others have lived.
I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry.
In April. We would meet in Paris.
We may never leave.

© 2018 j.g. lewis