Friday, May 21, 2021

Smokers

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE AUTHOR READ


I smoked for about 5 years

1/4 pack a day, maybe 1/2 at most

when a pack had 25 cigarettes

(so 7 to 13, never more)

and cost about $5.

I stopped in my early 30s, 

so haven't smoked in 20 years, 

and never thought of myself 

as 'a smoker' and that's important, 

somehow. For those who do (or did, 

think of themselves) 

a pack of cigarettes 

is a pocket-size calculator

keeping track, 

marking days 

before or after quitting, 

like BC/AD,

or like a punch-clock card, a pack

keeps an hourly schedule,

a smoke with your morning coffee, 

at break-time, after lunch, and so on.


Smoking defines you in ways 

few things do, you're a smoker, 

a non-smoker, or once-smoker;

my dad was a smoker,

a 'Craven A' man,

a pack-and-a-half-a-day man

all his life till the day he died,

but smoking didn't kill him,

other things did,

and that's how he knew,

he could tempt fate,

and that all things considered, 

he was pretty lucky in life.


Mom smoked too 

but wasn't devoted like him,

only half-a-pack, and quit

when they divorced,

the marriage run its course.


Dad taught me 

in the way he smoked,

how a man looks

when he loses himself in love, eyes closed

drawing in, exhaling, slowly, 

like he's praying,

smoking is like meditation,

you concentrate on every breath.

Dad would cross a border

just to buy a carton at the duty-free.

He was at ease 

when he smoked,

did his best thinking 

when he smoked,

couldn't be touched 

when he smoked.

I tried to be like him,

for a while, 

then around the time 

my first child was born, 

I realized I couldn't 

and actually didn't want to

be like him,

AD, after dad.

4 comments:

Ken Stollon said...

You might enjoy "The Best Cigarette" by Billy Collins.

But your poem is really more about your dad than about smoking, per se. I enjoyed it.

Re-think, perhaps, though, the line "Dad was committed". It had me thinking something other than what you intended.

B. Glen Rotchin said...

Thanks for the help Kelp!

Ken Stollon said...

You're a poet ... you know it!

Claudine said...

I remember my mam smoking a " Craven A" after lunch, very rarely though, only on Sundays.
As for me, I've only smoked around 2 or 3 am when I was in a nightclub somewhere in PARIS or in a ski resort and, of course I can count on one hand how many times I've smoked a cig... One fact is sure : I hate night clubs!