PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Tobacco, and wind, and warmth, and laugh. What a tremendous guy! My grandfather’s habit of smoking became more elegant when he began to use a pipe. He began smoking from an early age, when it was a common, socially accepted and manly act. One time of cold and sweat, of board games (dominoes was his favorite) and peanuts, my grandfather began to smoke. He softly introduced those brown pieces of leaves in that wooden artifact, carefully squashing the product to make it thorough, and used a match to began his sacred ritual of introducing smoke to its throat and lungs for then exhaling it, just for the pleasure of it. As kids, my brothers and I couldn’t understand. Maybe he it was normal, maybe it was healthy, or maybe it was just another vicissitude of life, one that everyone must experience some day as we become older. He was tall, imposing and kind, loving to his grandchildren and wise. He was always well dressed, which always impressed us his grandkids. I even believed he never took off his beret, not even for bath. I was little, I didn’t though of the difficulties that would have brought to his daily life. But I didn’t care, and he always had it. In our family reunions he sat in a chair and talk politics, and eat snacks, and drank beer. And smoked. Many things can be used to associate him with, indeed. Oh, but his pipe. That Shakespearean, no, that Sherlockian artifact (I’m sorry I got confused, but is to difficult to get used to describe and talk about something as important as his pipe) that accentuates the intellectual capacity and elegance of its user, at least in the outside. He always prepared it with such elegance and naturalness it almost seemed as it was instinctive. And it transformed from a grandpa to an wise, profound, mysterious old man, who always appeared to have an answer to everything. And time passed. My brothers and I grew older, and he too. Soon, his health began to decay. And there was no pipe. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, or this is not a pipe. This was not that mysterious, distant man. It was a different man, a more alive, a more human, a more realistic man. Or maybe I matured, and saw things differently. Or maybe age became a toll on him, as it will be to us all. Or maybe, just maybe it was the absence of his pipe.