Smoking a Pipe on a Cool Afternoon

Autumn has moved from its more beautiful stage filled with color and crisp air to its more blustery stage filled with wind, rain, and cold here in Washington. As it does so, more of us are driven inside, and driven to more warming activities. As I write this, I’m drinking a glass of red wine while sitting next to the fireplace in my basement.

Times like this can lead us to melancholy and depression. There’s something inherently saturnine about this shift in Autumn. But Saturn does not just influence death and decay, but also contemplation. Perhaps this should be an opportunity to think and reflect, to be a little mystical. Ritual can help us with this. Whether your ritual is washing the dishes, doing laundry, making a fire, preparing a pipe to smoke, or something else altogether, the ritual can lead you to deeper places if you let it. To that end, here’s a poem that I think gets at the necessity of slowing down when the weather drives you inside, where ritual and action can lead to deeper contemplation.

"Smoking a Pipe on a Cool Afternoon”

Like Celtic knots the smoke unfurls and gives
The air an illuminated quality.
Breathed in, blown out, it dies and then it lives.
It gives the room a kind of sublimity.
The cherry heart comes from fire, but air
Keeps the fire alive. A balance must
Be struck. Calm, deliberate, like prayer,
The fire must be fanned. Give in to trust
And let the smoke like incense rise in rings,
In swirls and curls, like Kells now come to life.
And see how like a thurible it sings
Of a world with airish spirits, rife
With things unseen and so unheard of, whole.
All this and more pours from the poet's bole.

This poem first appeared in Macrina Magazine and has since been published in my debut book of poetry, The Green Man, which can be purchased here.