NaPoWriMo - April 24th

April is National Poetry Writing Month. In celebration of poets everywhere, and to encourage those who are just embarking on their literary journey, I will be posting poetry (not mine) each day for the month of April. Please take a look and enjoy this special art.

Collin Tobin

Bio:

Collin is a native of the Boston, MA area, who graduated with a B.A in English, and an M.A. in Teaching at Lander University in South Carolina. While there, he earned the 1997 Southern Literary Festival's first prize in poetry. He is back in New England and enjoying life with his beautiful wife Gina and his two girls, Abby and Rachel. He intensely enjoys writing poetry, but also fiction, and is fearlessly working on his second unpublished novel.

Ash

I stood by your elbow at the front door
While you chatted with our neighbor
Your idle conversation swirled above my head
And an early summer breeze
Lazily tangled with your cigarette smoke
Pulled it through the door's screen
Diced it into little squares
Reassembled it on the other side
Again, and again, and again
A rehearsal of magic

The back and forth
Soothing swell of motherly gossip
Lulled me
As I leaned against you
And you leaned your still young, slim arm
Against the door
The warmth of the sun
And your warm hip
Kept me there for long minutes
As your cigarette ash elongated, stooped
In this shared torpor
As if nodding off
Then broke

The ash fell on my own arm
I forgot to scream I think
As I dumbly stared in horror
At the ash's still glowing red center
As if witnessing the delivery
Of a newborn devil

You jumped back
And extinguished it in a slap

Years later
You asked that I pour
The boxed up three pounds
Of your own cool ash
Into your favorite lake
I don't even have that now

Which is why I wish
That cigarette cinder had been brighter, hotter
Burned deeper
To leave behind the shiny cup of a scar
That I could touch, console
While lost in thought