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Smoke By Seb Parker As a child, I'd sit at the table In the kitchen with my mother, both Listening to my father’s after-dinner Stories of the old country, of his High adventures, as he smoked his cigarette. Smoke wafted to dissipate, rough Words sliced by the ceiling fan To nothing. "One day," I’d think to myself, "I’ll rise up to such impossible glory." But there isn't really a story to tell, Not to him, now, when I pay him visits In the chemical stench of the hospital Where he has had his laryngectomy. I wait; he turns; he mouths, half-paralyzed: See what can happen to you? See? Barely intelligible, before drifting Back into a peaceful morphine dream. "Yes," I whisper to this sleeping man, In a sterile room, who cannot hear me. © Copyright 2004, Seb Parker, All Rights Reserved. |
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Document last modified on: 01/06/2007