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TO A BABY, REACHING FOR THE SMOKE

For Janet

Your gray eyes dance with ecstasy,A cooing chuckle lifts and purls,And rose-soft fingers laughinglyGrope, as the slow smoke coils and curls.
Out of my pipe, a spiral mistYou reach and close on, gay with hopeThat in your tiny tight-locked fistIt will stay captive. . . . Still you grope,
And still it slips, dissolves, eludesTo feathery nothingness—and a newPillar of grayness slowly broodsUp from the pipe's bowl, teasing you.
If once those rose-soft fingers turnAnd find a solid goal, they gainOnly the soiling pipe, to burnWith reddening memories of pain. . . .
Endlessly so we strain and gropeTo reach some coiling, curling wraith

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