a clear day in october

Jim Lewis is an internationally-published poet described by his friends as a Renaissance Man, multi-talented, remarkable, or sometimes as “odd, but in a good way.” By profession, he is a certified Family Nurse Practitioner, with a parallel career in technology. By hobby, he is a musician, writer, photographer, and kayaker. Jim’s interest in writing goes back to his early youth, but he only started to send out his poetry to editors and publishers when he reached his sixties. To his surprise and delight, several pieces were quickly accepted for publication, and so for the first time he envisioned a collection of his favorite poems. These hand-picked favorites have been paired with his own photography to share with you as a clear day in october. From the foreword by Laura M Kaminski Dust off your own memories of childhood desires and disappointments. Open the quiet closet of your experiences as a parent. Find the twins—reverence and irreverence—bring them both. Bring along the bridges you have crossed, bring the ashes of the ones that you have burned. Clean the surface of whatever device on which you receive the news of grief in other places, other cultures, other nations. You are cleared through security to travel, enter hospitals and prisons. Tuck a handkerchief discretely in your pocket just in case. Are you ready to walk past empty rooms, sit in a café, read a recipe for sacrifice and faith? Are you ready for rain, for grief? Are you willing to slop pigs? Are you willing to be torn and mended, blessed? Then come, and welcome. You’re invited to make your own contrails across this sky, across this clear day in October.