I called her the smoking woman
because every time I saw her,
she was puffing on one cigarette
with the next in her hand already lit.
I’d no idea where she lived,
but somewhere in the neighborhood no doubt,
for she was always coming and going,
with her head bent over,
either from a bad back
or to protect her miserable fire from the wind.
She looked about sixty
though I suspect she was younger
for the face that emerged
so rarely from her bowed neck
was filled with the kind of crevices
that hard times chisel out
more potently than years.
She never spoke,
though she occasionally whistled
an unrecognizable tune
through the tiny clouds
that hung around her lips.
There was old man
who’d chat to me at the bus stop every morning
before I got wheels of my own.
And the “umbrella lady”
who never went out without one
no matter the weather.
I don’t know why I thought of them just now.
I didn’t know their names, their histories.
Haven’t seen them in years.
But the oddest people do come to mind from time to time.
But that’s my life these days.
A receptacle for whatever comes to mind.
