Episcopal Fag Packet

Time is running out for the smoker. There’s no use being a damn fool about it, nobody smokes anymore and between long looks and shorter breath,  I’m resigned to the blessed break, and  I figure to quit on the New year. And there’ll be less wine, and café food, the waist line already is shrinking…  On the way out, a reflection from last winter, a puff for the censers. I might change the title.

Episcopal fag packet

Look up from the packet’s spent, necrotic foot –
not exactly lolling on the table – to the spotlight taped
or roped, to a January tree. Consider then:

among addiction’s anti-advertising’s pics of death
and consequence, that over-egg the pudding,
in the last analysis, there is a failure to connect

with the inevitable turning of the seasons,
the turn we all expect. That is, when the tree
returns to green and nests sparrows sheltered

in its branches’ welcome, not the shiny, black, wet,
dripping thing it is today, it’s not disturbed a jot
by the spotlight’s accusations or the days grown short.