Pipes

 

We would walk past

a fairly ragged track

to blue flood gates

and a sandstone wall

that lines the tow path.

 

It was here that we used

to go to smoke at school.

Among the lime trees that

were planted in the tarmac:

good visibility.  Protected.

 

The first cigarette I smoked

was a Dunhill stolen from my

Grandmother in the days

when she still lived with us,

shortly before the fire.

 

But really we smoked what

we could: cigars, cigarettes,

loosely built roll-ups and

some of us even bought

pipes. Short-stalked-adults.

 

And so we would stand,

four of us, all but gone

now, our pipes filled with

flotsam, grimacing through

the enjoyment of it all;

 

unsure of what we were

doing: whether it was right

or wrong, but, haloed

in our exhausted cloud,

another world was opening.