Jeffrey Wells Powers

There was a time when all my friends wanted to be poets.  Some became them. Jeff tried with words but had to settle for a poets life, instead.  I may have been the cause, (I hate this word) "inadvertently", in stopping his writing.  At the time, I thought the spirit was ethereal and assailed his earth bound imagination.  Jeff's beauty was of this earth.

 

To meet Jeff was to love him.  It was simply because he loved you.  There was no analysis. There was no question. There was no hesitation in his eyes.  It was always love at first sight...no matter.  Sure, he wasn't perfect and no saint and hard to live with, those times we did.  And I sure wouldn't want to have been one of his women...well, I'm not sure.  Actually, truthfully, if I had been a woman....  Those loves we shared, always let me know, somehow, that I lacked "Jeffreyness".  I haven't yet learned  how to love.

 

I won't try to tell Jeff's story.  A story of youth, a motorcycle crash, of constant pain, drug addiction, our "tiny Tim", and life addiction.  But, in some ways unknown to me, he is part of me and the story of my life, that I can and will tell.  I hope I will do the meaning of that justice, in the highest sense.

 

It was a Sunday, not very long ago.  I awoke and dressed.  An overly large white T-shirt, blue jeans, white socks and black loafers, "whoa" I thought, this is weird I never wear this combination.  I had dressed as Jeff.  I thought of Jeff and his smile.  I smiled and proceeded to take my life apart.  His path was one I've never followed, best put as "to thine own self be true".  I hope I can...after all if we can't be true to ourselves, we can't be true.

 

Later that week I found out that Jeff had died that Saturday night.  How blessed I am, a true friend came to save me.  Took the time to search out my soul on this his earth, before he traveled.