Watching Old Movies

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Dan Campion

Watching Old Movies

 

      We former smokers gaze with interest as
      the Zippo lighters flick and matches flare
      and flames touch tips of cigarettes and bowls
      of pipes filled to the brim with burley flake.
      Is this, we ask, the fifty-seventh take,
      to get the light-up right? When Cooper rolls
      a smoke and licks the paper, we’re aware
      what major-star dexterity he has;
      when George Raft and his party at the jazz
      club wreathe themselves in Cuban-leaf-thick air,
      we sense they’re tainting all the room’s mink stoles;
      when John Wayne tokes, we know it isn’t fake.
      Tobacco use belongs in black and white.
      We’re still in need there, asking for a light.