Outside, in dim night light, smoking a Christmas cigar,
looking along the front wall, the angle it makes with the eaves,
the dark triangle at the top of the down pipe;
exhaling a plume of smoke, watching it diffuse beneath
that geometry, the smell of Christmases long gone.
Faces, faint holograms now, waft on that tobacco thermal.
Viewing them coolly in the dank air, those that carried me to now;
life a succession of relations with others,
the rise and fall of characters through my own story,
lights that shone, dazzling or dim, and lights that went out.
They smile, talk and laugh, settle cups on saucers, swish whiskey
round crystal glasses, roll cigars along lips before lighting.
I watch them: acts and scenes on stages that are gone, my boarded up theatres;
watch them, essential links, coffin-bearers
and stubbing out the butt of my cigar, return to the lights in the house.
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