Passing

An old man with pipe and stick

is sitting on a kitchen chair

beside a rick of turf

in the field before his house;

there is a mountain in the background.

One Summer’s day, passing,

I watched a curlicue of smoke rise

from the man’s pipe,

gyrate in front of his eyes,

then disappear

to become part of the nothing,

the blue sky not far from Achill Sound.
A moment,
one of the fleeting series,
the passing that is a lifetime.