Even now when we
can no longer remember
how much of the scent
of the world we gave up
life after life in the hope
of being able to hold
something in our hands
we recognize you at once
every time without fail
day or night wherever
you may be coming from
across the hill or
under the door
and we imagine you
even when you are not there
we can never be sure
you reach all the way to us
out of somewhere we have forgotten
we wake into dreams of you
as the bees do
hoping it is not true
the world is burning
you have always been warning
us too late and only
as you were leaving
ghost of what we have known
something reminds us of you
in the fragrance of morning
in the opening flowers
in a breath at the moment
it seems to be ours
To Smoke
--W. S. Merwin
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I posted that poem once before. Once, when I was quitting smoking and it was still in my thoughts and in my dreams and in my heart. It was a part of me, a friend I did not know how to be without after a decade of shared time.
Quitting things is hard, because quitting means that there is something you are having to go without, something you want, something you need.
Of course it could not last. I eventually went the way of Zyban, a scary and hard road. Zyban was one of the harder things I have been through in my life.
Harder becuase it left me confused, ill, scared and crazy. For months.
But it did help me to stop smoking.
And realise that I wasn't losing anything.
And now months later I barely think it, of my desire to hold something in my hands. Unpleasant things happen and it is not what I rush to do to make me feel better... In fact it is the last thing I think of.
I still recognise the scent of it, everywhere. But I don't desire it.
And sadly I know now that I never summoned buses with it.
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