"On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"

 "On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"


Plenus annis abiit, plenus honoribus - Pliny the Younger



Pall Mall straights,
smoked down to the last knuckle
and chased with bad coffee.

(Go ahead and take a gander
all the way to the bottom of your cup
if you don't believe me.)

Good thing a man ain't judged
by the quality of the cup he pours,
but rather by the spirit in which
it's made
and offered.

Anyway,
alas:

Nigh three decades of practical
advice, plain speech, judgment
laid out just like that
or reserved, when that was
called for,
have ended.

There'll be no more talk of
Vietnam, Newton High,
CB radio, books, the flora
and fauna of East Texas,
memories of Annell,
Marine Corps shit, uranium mining
in New Mexico,
all the things that made/make
life interesting
while seated at the counter, ashtrays
filling, coffee cups emptying,
books always within reach.

Death doesn't snatch life away
quite as quickly as we think.
Shit hits the fan before we
know it, sure, but history shows
that it doesn't always
rob our memory blind.

Dirt curving from county to private
roads; the cattle guards we built
in '91, long since filled in;
the rich, sweet, never quite identifiable
taste of well water; the woods
worthy of their own poetic cycle.

Memory bleeds
like the wound it is,
but we can stanch it
with Pall Mall straights
and bad coffee
here on this dining room table.

Admire the model trains,
the deer rifle,
the shortwave radio,
the heaping plates of fried venison
and okra, then set them aside

and let's do what we can:
forgive the bad coffee,
and send the man's spirit
out among the pines,
where it belongs.