Portrait in Ash
In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.
Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.
I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.
Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.
How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?
In retrospect, your body still resists.
Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.
You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.
* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.
O at the Edges 
Beautiful and bittersweet. Reminds me of my parents and their ever present cigarettes and their early deaths to smoking related diseases. I never smoked—except mentally. Usually after a meal I’ll light up an imaginary cigarette.
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It seems like everyone smoked back then, at least all of the adults I remember. Crazy!
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Most of my parents’ friends did. Now, I was the only one in my group of friends whose parents smoked. I’m sure I smelled like a walking ashtray to all of them.
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Just think of all the secondhand smoke we inhaled. Yuck!
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I do! Every time I come down with a cough I’m pretty sure it’s lung cancer. My parents didn’t even roll down the windows in the car when they lit up.
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Same here!
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I loved the smell of my mother’s purse when she opened it to give me a dollar, all the loose tobacco from her unfiltered Lucky Strikes, sweet vapors that adhered to the paper bills while I was growing up; a natural precursor to fifty-five years of smoking. A lifetime addict less the last 8 months, I’ll crave a cigarette the rest of my life.
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I, too, liked the smell of tobacco, at least before it was burning, but somehow managed to avoid the habit.
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A father poem perhaps?
Both my parents were smokers … somehow I avoided the lure … but I do recognize its potentcy and in spite of the consequences I honor my parents’ choice to indulge. I watched many times my mother’s mood level out with a few puffs – life was not easy for her, relief an essential survive- right- now tactic.
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A mother poem, actually, but appropriate to both. It was the same for my mother, too.
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A retrospect where the body resists… A lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon…. It’s a nice piece. #Portrait in Ash
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Thank you!
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You’re welcome dearie
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I remember most ;being under the kitchen table, listening as they talked. Then coming up too fast, the occasional burn from the end of one.
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Ah, those memories!
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This one makes me sweat. And it’s not hot here in San Francisco. Nice work!
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Thanks, Jilanne! I hope you’ve cooled off by now. 🙂
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Excellent poem – “How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?” – How did you know about my white trousers?
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Ha! I gave up white clothing some time ago…
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Allure outweighed by reality, and so well put.
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Reality often sucks…
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