Alas, the Smokers

I grew up when thick blue

atmospheres hung in diners,
bars, and living-rooms. My
Old Man smoked cigars
and pipes in the house.
The mad uncle I worked
for at a rock-crushing plant
chain-smoked cigarettes
and chewed tobacco
at the same time.

To be ladies, women held
cigarettes a certain way,
blew the smoke straight up
to a ceiling, left red lipstick
on the crushed butts.

Men stubbed out butts
in ashtrays or stepped on
smoking remnants
in the dirt to punctuate
an arguing point: smoking
as rhetorical trope.

Professors smoked cigarettes
in class. My teacher Karl
Shapiro tried to quit
the cigs, took up
a pipe but couldn't keep it
lit. The cardboard matches
piled up as we chewed on
poem-drafts and he looked
on, sometimes waving the pipe
in a flourish like a failed wand.

Smokers look furtive now,
as if they were on parole.
Even in rain, they herd-up
against walls, a regulation
distance from a work-site plinth.
Although I'm not a smoker
of tobacco, I feel sorry for them.