Watching Smoke

They tell you: light a candle in the darkness –
so you found an old squat Christmas one
in preparation for the possibility that the impending
hurricane might turn your lamps out. You lit
the thing which sputtered as it crackled up

the dust. You tamped it out. Its measly wick
engendered far more smoke than fire. But:
wisps of it seduced the space. Faint wiry tendrils
formed a face. And though it wasn’t quite
your ghost of Christmas Past it helped you recollect

the first and last time you expected holidays
to satisfy. You were seven: sitting on a window seat,
late, twenty-fourth December 1958 – wondering
when you would feel what you supposed
you were supposed to feel. For most of your

ensuing life you blamed your parents that you didn’t.
And now you’re sitting watching smoke evoke
the resignation of a stranger who had long ago
ceased thinking of a manger or a tree or Christianity
when he imagined joy. This made you stringent

with the boy you’d been: you wouldn’t
coddle him. He had to learn he had to make
a story up to conjure glory up. The lesson loomed,
upfront, declarative: the mind must give.
It’s got to find, then live, its narrative.





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