Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century

Sister Cigarette

82 Sister Cigarette She leans on her cane and smokes. Her hair is Irish white. She praised me once because I smoked a pipe the way her father did. “Pipe smokers are never bad people,” she said, and flicked ashes. Sister President could find no reason to forbid what some considered unbecoming for a nun near eighty. That seemed divinely sensible. On chill or sunny days she waves, and I wave back—like sailors on the decks of separate ships sailing in the same direction. ...