We sat on lawn chairs, four friends in the shading dusk,
breathing the brittle smoke of ancient cigarettes
Carl had saved since the seventies for such a time as this,
when a bit more inhaled tobacco dust would do little harm
to our already old and leathered lungs.
The hot tips glowed like the batons of symphony conductors
who still had live music in their orchestral hands.
We followed the jabs and jerky flow of each other’s
gesticulated stories dancing through the Labor Day dark,
the people we engendered, the small pile of possessions
we stacked and guarded on the earth,
the accomplishments we hung on our skeletons like skin.
Jeff marveled we had made it this far with forces
from Hirohito at our birth to ISIS now arrayed against us.
the duck–and–cover H-bomb of the fifties, missiles , maniacs,
menacing minorities demanding what was rightly theirs.
Diseases too,
iron lungs, surgeries,
and crashes of various kinds which destroy
statistically thirty two thousand a day.
No helmets. No airbags. No belted seats.
Yet,
here we are.
Survivors.
Jim Croce’s bottle is empty,
though his disincarnate voice still sings of saving time.
None of us were ready to be reduced to the sublime.
We snuffed our smokes in the wet grass
and spoke of what we lost
and the lucky things we never had.
Smoke,
our lives seemed once so solid.
Ashes used to be something else.
2015