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The Smoke


Snow still sheaths the streets in their mountains,
and the spring trees shudder in the wind off their lakes,
until night’s smoke frames them and fades them
and  finally finally fades them forever and they’re gone…
gone into the smoke of the world.

Smell of her long hair hot in the sun through the windshield,
the rattle of dried corn sheaves shaken by dusk’s breeze,
soft heft of breasts small and sweet as winter pears,
the breath rising in the dry heat parching her body.
And the fire rose up in me and I stretched her out, O lovely,
across the pale cloth and reached out
and holding held and held until gone
gone into the smoke of the world.

Gone.
Gone fifty years.
The day, the lips, the hair — gone,
gone forever, forever gone,
gone into the gone world…
gone into the smoke of the world.

Above Berkeley’s Old Moe’s bookstore
she loomed over me in the lamplight
as morning seemed forever delayed.
An eastern school took her at dawn,
her name forgotten her scent and her flesh
remembered so that even now,
on an unknown street here in the west,
I sometimes pass
a woman with that scent and turn
wondering, all these past gone years later,
could that one, that one, that one have been her
in that night when the dawn delayed,
and I woke to find her scent on the pillow
but her body forever gone, gone forever…
gone into the smoke of the world.

They arrive dancing along the blade of night.
They leave fading into the smoke of dawn.
The mists of memory swirl and fold,
and remove their distinct details:
the haiku left behind in old boxes:
“I scrunched up the moon
into my water bucket…”

Did someone say she became a singer
somewhere in California? Judy? Was that,
last innocent love of my youth, her name?

The Christian roommate with tawny hair,
stroking the breasts near the kennels of the barkless dogs.
That musk, that hot breath in the cherry orchards,
the dwarf cattle, that hand closing upon me
so fleetingly and then gone…
gone into the smoke of the world.

The Italian with the Moped.
The cowgirl with the blues.
The lapsed Catholic.
The painter with the horse’s face and too-tight jeans.
The chintz shack. The quilt covered table.
The kiss upon my body — Ah and Ah and Ah —
The whispered love in the attic of the San Francisco Mansion —
The poet’s garret on the side street, gray corridors —
The one named after the little deer… Bambi

And then the forest takes a spark
And all the woods are blazing
And ash drifts down over the days
And they are all gone … all gone…
gone into the smoke of the world.

Then the years of the cities and the slim socialites,
the oh so elegant, the oh so intelligent women
wafting out of the night and into the smoky clubs.
The models and the painters and the posers.
Hairdressers, shop girls, debutantes…
and those that loved the literary life.

The mockers and the shockers who kept
mostly cats but sometimes chittering marmots.
The ones who were slumming around way downtown.
The socialites at the Black and White Ball
who needed their foreheads held as they puked
into the shrubbery and then headed back to the bar
for another large double of oblivion.

And then in the room next to the roses in Big Sur,
Holding the one who became the long wife.
Now gone off to her aging and gone, long gone…
gone into the smoke of the world.

The brief wife calls from her place in the smoke,
hiding her need at the center of her speech,
and achieving assurance can’t wait to fade back
to the rooms that she’s chosen to have and to hold.

“How am I?
I’m good.
I’m doing quite well.”

“That’s good.
Glad to hear it.
Stay well.”

Missed connections.
Harsh static.
The cellphone breaks up and fades and she’s gone…
gone into the smoke of the world.

Snow still sheaths the streets
in their mountains and rivers,
and the spring trees shudder
in the wind off their lakes,
and the streetlights flicker
in their towns and their cities,
until winter banks their fires,
and night fades them finally,
and finally forever they’re gone,
gone into the gone world,
gone, gone, gone, long gone,
gone into the smoke of the world.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Phil in Englewood February 14, 2019, 4:19 AM
    • Terry January 3, 2022, 8:44 AM

      Phil, thank you for the link. Saudade. Explains where I have been for the last 8 years or so.

      Gerard’s beautiful piece fits my journey to a ‘T’.

      Past memories make the present less harsh for me at 76.

  • Roy Lofquist February 14, 2019, 4:40 AM

    Saudade – it comes and goes over the years. Sometimes it makes you cry.

  • ghostsniper February 14, 2019, 4:44 AM

    “Gone fifty years.”

    Amazing, idn’t it?
    To look back on half a decade.
    Last night after supper my wife and I were talking about it.
    Yesterday she got birthday cards from 2 of her life long girlfriends that she rarely sees any more.
    One now has 10 grandchildren, and the other has to have aorta surgery.
    We’re trying to get used to “old people” talk, and not liking it one dam bit.
    I told her, wanna hear something scary?
    (hesitantly) What?
    Either or both of us could be harboring something right now that could kill us this year, and not know anything about it.
    She didn’t reply.

    This morning I sent her an animated gif Valentine Day’s card to go with the BIG bag of M&M’s I put on the dining table just for her. (4 weeks and 4 days ago I stopped eating chocolate for good)

  • jd February 14, 2019, 6:27 AM

    What a gift you have, Gerard. I am grateful to have found your site.

  • GoneWithTheWind February 14, 2019, 6:34 AM

    Two years ago one of the many Christmas cards I send got a response from my friend’s grand daughter that he had passed away. I felt the need to respond to say something. To tell her of her grandfather that I knew some 58 years ago. I did write that letter, told stories of things we did. How we got drunk for a week before he went off to Air Force basic training. How he tried to lay rubber in his 53 Ford but dropped his drive shaft in the street instead. About her grandmother when she was only his girlfriend. I wrote it but never sent it.

  • JiminAlaska February 14, 2019, 8:52 AM

    The gone(s) leave memories & that’s enough.

    The missed; the girl with the green Morgan 3 wheeler, the octoroon glimpsed on Broad street, the gold skinned girl on the beach in Manly across Sydney Harbor, the almost(s), the what ifs. you always wonder…

  • Sam L. February 14, 2019, 9:26 AM

    DAMN, Girard, you’ve done it again. That was lovely, and lovelornly.

  • John Venlet February 14, 2019, 10:34 AM

    Gerard, a re-occurring theme of things gone/lost seems to be at work here, lately. I reference the posts “The Witness,” a very short story by Jorge Luis Borges,” “Something Wonderful: Photographer Sets Up Camera Traps To Photograph The Black Leopard In Africa For The First Time In 100 Years, (though the leopard was not gone/lost, it was just doing what leopard’s do, secretively), and “Smoke.” I would not classify the posts as being maudlin, but they do evoke a certain sense of mourning. And while things/people/events may be forgotten, or gone, in this earthly world, nothing is forgotten or gone from His eyes.

    For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:13-16

    I pray all is well with you.

  • Vanderleun February 14, 2019, 10:41 AM

    Thank you, John.

    Is all well with me?

    I’d have to say that all is as well with me as my current circumstances allow.

    That said, “the attitude is always gratitude.”

  • Howard Nelson February 14, 2019, 12:17 PM

    Who can complain since the Sandy School massacre, or since the 100’s of other atrocities? Better to have loved and lost …
    Tho I expressed some kindness and received some too, still, not enough. And so in my gratitude I grieve for opportunities rejected. Were I not a fool, I’d be nothing much at all.

  • Mike Austin January 2, 2022, 3:58 AM

    Almost everyone I have ever met in my 68 years of life has vanished into “the smoke of the world”. How could it have been otherwise? Passions cool, interests change, futures collide, plans diverge, love—once forever promised—moves on to greener pastures.

    There was a guy I knew 48 years ago. We met in the USAF and called each other “friends” although the only things we really shared were our hatreds. Our “friendship” gradually faded away and he went into “the smoke of the word”. Twenty years later I ran into him. As we talked I knew there was something “off”, something not quite right. And then it hit me: He wasn’t seeing me at all, he was seeing the man I had been 20 years ago, a man who had died and been reborn a dozen times since then. He was talking to a complete stranger. I could not wait to get away from him. I could not bear his reminders of the man I used to be.

    “”I don’t remember… I don’t want to remember
    In fact I’ve heard too much already…
    Oh, oh, it seems you just don’t know
    And you just don’t understand me
    I’ve got no use for the tricks of modern times
    They tangle all my thoughts like ivy
    Ivy”

    There is one whom I wish had never entered “the smoke of the world”. Her name was Janelle. She was 18 when we met; I was 27. She would make her own perfume out of crushed rose petals. Now 40 some years later, whenever I smell a rose, I think of her.

  • ghostsniper January 2, 2022, 4:47 AM

    You’re not who you were 20 years ago, nor is anyone else.
    A little depressing when that fact hits you right in the face.
    Happened to me recently when out of the blue I received an actual “letter” from the dood I went to Alaska with in 1980. In L.A. late 1980 we parted ways under friendly terms never to connect agin though I searched for him several times. Then the letter last month, and numerous emails with attachments, and phone calls. Seems like he has changed little, but I have. His ways are now foreign to me, and an uncomfortable reminder of how I used to be. After a flurry of text messages with pix from him I just kinda let the whole thing drift off, back to where it was.

    • Mike Austin January 2, 2022, 5:27 AM

      Almost the same thing happened to me. I was engaged to a Peruvian woman named Marcela more than 23 years ago. She was a stunning beauty. She broke it off, then we got back together 6 months later, then she broke it off, then we got back together one year later, then she broke it off. By that time I was not at all hurt; I was pissed though not at her, but at myself for being such a fool. Amazingly, one year later she wanted to get back together. No way. I simply ignored her entreaties and felt good therefore.

      Fast forward to last year. Out of the blue I got an email but not from her, from a friend of hers. She told me that Marcela wanted to contact me, and if that would be ok. I agreed out of curiosity more than anything else. So Marcela and I exchanged a few emails and one phone call. She related how terrible her life had been since we broke up. And to tell the truth, the things she told me were true disasters. Her life was a total mess. And like almost all of life’s terrors, these were all self-inflicted. During the phone call, as she was talking I was saying to myself how glad I was that she had broken it off with me. I wanted no part of her life. I sent her back into “the smoke of the world”. She should have never emerged from it.

  • jd January 2, 2022, 5:54 AM

    The poem still mesmerizes.

    A very close call for my son and his family a couple of days ago.
    He lives only a few miles from the Boulder, Co. fire on Thursday.
    “There but for the grace of God…”

    • Mike Austin January 3, 2022, 6:18 AM

      “…go I.” Goes all of us. I am glad your son and his family escaped the flames.

  • John G Condon January 2, 2022, 5:59 AM

    “I sit among the dust and hope
    That dust will cover me.
    I stir the ashes in the hearth,
    Though cold they be.
    I cannot bear to close the door,
    To seal my loneliness away
    While dust and ashes yet remain
    Of my love’s day.” ~SRD
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmVXYOJzAJM&ab_channel=KOUJI328G

    As we travel further and further away from the fires of our own creation, those youthful memories still glow with a brightness untarnished. Though the body ages, it is the eyes that remain unchanged in the way they hold you.

    It is a shame you cannot meet her again, Gerard, but it seems she is Gonne.
    .
    Thank you for sharing this poem.

  • Anonymous January 2, 2022, 6:08 AM

    but the moon is not in the bucket.

  • Bill in Tennessee January 2, 2022, 7:10 AM

    Oh my, how have you managed to capture the moments of my youth and adulthood? By reading my mail? By hacking my emails? Have you hired private detectives to follow me about, taking minute notes on the vagaries of my life? But then… no… these must be universal, or perhaps only near-universal, experiences. Do all of us, or most of us, have these regrets and carry these pangs around with us, just waiting to be awakened, again, by some chance song on the radio, or a certain perfume scent somewhere in some banal grocery store? Thank you, Gerard, through your words I stand revealed.

  • James ONeil January 2, 2022, 8:19 AM

    83 years, much of the past is six feet under, as are the majority of past friends.
    The passings are good.
    The gones are good and gone.
    The what have beens all led to now and now, usually, is grand.
    But one can’t help but occasionally wonder about past what ifs, the might haves.
    Oh well, another day to do, -27°F., throw another log on the fire and maybe a touch of Hellcat Maggy (Cheap Irish blend) in the coffee.

    • Mike Austin January 2, 2022, 1:11 PM

      I seem to outlasted both friend and foe. For I am still here, and many of them are not. Just an observation, nothing more. I never think of “might haves”. I constantly think of “what might be”.

      Never tried Hell-Cat Maggie.

      “Hell-Cat Maggie is for those who defy convention and do things their own, rebellious way.”

      Sounds like you. Sounds like me.

  • David Spence January 2, 2022, 8:58 AM

    Saudade-Some days more sweet, other days more bitter.
    https://youtu.be/0X_vfdKm55Q

  • Dirk January 2, 2022, 5:03 PM

    Dammit,,,,,,,, guys, quit Quitting, You are all the same person, you were,,,,,with a few miles, life’s experiences. Life’s about choices. Choose well, live learn love. Ain’t no redo’s. Here’s to 2022, we’ve all got soooo much more to learn,,,,,,,,, experience, this coming year.

    VI

    • Mike Austin January 3, 2022, 2:03 AM

      What I am is the sum total of every decision I have made—plus whatever God decided to toss in just for fun. Now at 68 I rather like who and what I am. There is nothing I would change because there is nothing I could change. Yesterday is gone forever. Today has just begun. Tomorrow promises new adventures. On with the show.

    • ghostsniper January 3, 2022, 4:12 AM

      “You are all the same person, you were…”
      =======
      Nope. I’m at least 100% diff.
      I don’t do wheelies on Harleys nor do I jump out of airplanes or slalom water ski.
      I don’t do a 1000 things I used to do but I do 1000 things I never did in my yoot.
      So yeah, that dood I used to be is, well, just a memory.
      I live for today and tomorrow but I spend a fair amount of time remembering….

      • Mike Austin January 3, 2022, 6:29 AM

        Used to do wheelies on my Kawasaki 750 3-cylinder. Used to parachute. Used to rock climb. Used to race motocross. Used to drag race. Used to compete in triathlons. Used to smoke weed. Used to date sketchy chicks.

        Now I recall my inner Aeschylus:

        “In visions of the night, like dropping rain,
        Descend the many memories of pain
        Before the spirit’s sight: through tears and sorrow
        Comes wisdom over the unwilling soul.”

        Wisdom. Finally. It took awhile, and the road was difficult, but I arrived.

      • Dirk January 4, 2022, 8:33 AM

        The point Ghost is/was,,,,,, you still could, if you chose to. Life’s the lesson, hopefully we all learned from our younger daring days.

        VI

        • Mike Austin January 4, 2022, 4:31 PM

          Those who didn’t learn from their younger days are either dead, in prison or fools.

  • John P Coggeshall January 2, 2022, 9:04 PM

    Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

    O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

    O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again

    Thanks, Gerald, for everything you post…some of it is bitter…bitter…but I like it, because it’s bitter…

    • Vanderleun January 4, 2022, 10:26 AM

      Bittersweet.