Portrait in Ash

blue-smoke

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.

21 thoughts on “Portrait in Ash”

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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robert okaji on July 18, 2019 at 9:05 am said:

It seems like everyone smoked back then, at least all of the adults I remember. Crazy!

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- nananoyz on July 18, 2019 at 9:10 am said:
  
  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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  - robert okaji on July 18, 2019 at 9:14 am said:
    
    Just think of all the secondhand smoke we inhaled. Yuck!
    
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    - nananoyz on July 18, 2019 at 9:15 am said:
      
      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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      - robert okaji on July 18, 2019 at 9:51 am said:
        
        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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robert okaji on July 18, 2019 at 9:54 am said:

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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robert okaji on July 18, 2019 at 3:57 pm said:

A mother poem, actually, but appropriate to both. It was the same for my mother, too.

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