Elegy for SmokingIt’s not the drug I missbut all those minuteswe used to stealoutside the library,under restaurant awnings,out on porches, by the quiet fields. And how kind it used to make uswhen we’d laughand throw our heads backand watch the dragon’s breathfloat from our mouths,all ravenous and doomed. Which is why I quit, of course,like almost everyone,and stay inside these daysstaring at my phone,chewing toothpicksand figuring the bill, while out the window,the smokers gatherin their same old constellations,like memories of ourselves. Or like the remnantsof some decimated tribe,come down out of the hillsto tell their storiesin the lightly-falling rain—to be, for a moment, simply thereand nowhere else,their faces glowingeach time someone lifts,like a gift, the little flame.