A response to H. R. Stoneback’s “Woodsmoke in Aigues-Mortes: Late November”

We miss the way the woodsmoke lingers
Outside Humanities, by the shore in Saintes-Maries,
Accompanying “noise complaints” from good gospel
At the Beaumont in KY. That drifting cloud and the smell
Of tobacco, a good blend. Some miss it on the way
To teach in Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Oklahoma,
On a street in New Orleans singing Hank tryna make it,
On the road to Santiago with bloody feet in Spain,
In a Bronx classroom keeping literature
And all things good and alive for the next generation.
That smoke will always linger long
After the cloud dissipates.

Let me tell you something that really happened:

In East Atlanta—now south Brooklyn—
At a party I’m handed a cigar box
Labelled Heaven. Confused, having
Left my tobacco habit in New Paltz,
I go to pass it on, but a dear friend
Tells me, wait, stop, open it. Inside
Is a wood pipe and bag of tobacco
With that same smell, she could
Not have known, and maybe
It was different but faith tells me
It is the same blend. They ask me
To smoke it there. I do not.

Later, we drive back North,
After spending time where the land
Is fertile and everything grows
All year long, only slows in the winter—
We drive up 95, sing songs in traffic,
Knowing the highway goes on forever,
Some places you just stop longer than others.

In Dobbs Ferry, down the road
From Irving’s Sunnyside, I head
Across the train tracks, down to
McKellar Cove with the pipe and tobacco
In a leather pouch, I turn my back to the city
Skyline, distant. I light the pipe, hold
The smoke in my mouth, feel the rush
And exhale. I like the way it lingers
In the fog of a warm downstate
January, through the smoke I see
The Palisades, nice, like childhood.
I toss the leather pouch and pipe
In the River, the tobacco spreads out
In the current, flowing two ways:
The Lenape only uttered
Muhheakantuck’s wide magic:
Out towards the ocean,
Back North to Highland.