The Best Cigarette

Painting by Shannon Kish


The Best Cigarette


There are many that I miss
having sent my last one
out a car window
sparking along the road one night,
years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting
into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers
still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something
going in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix
with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me
as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told
the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words
in parallel lines.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poemhunter