adirondack february in poetry

these are the days
that everything smells like cigarettes
everyone smokes just outside the doors
and rushes in right after the last puff
trailing in behind them
on their jackets scarves and hats
as if the very smoke itself
was sick of the dead of winter
was fighting to warm itself inside
before it dissipated into the air
one moment of warm before
oblivion

and maybe it takes
ninety or a hundred years
to do the same thing that the smoke
takes two or three seconds to do
but it all feels about the same
when it is this soul-numbingly
hope-killingly
meaning-destroyingly
bitterly
goddamn
cold

these are the days
that everything smells like cigarettes
as the smokers rush in
after sating their addiction
because those cigarettes will kill them
over the course of thirty years of course
but the windchill here would kill them
in about three minutes flat

so everything that isn’t cold
smells like smoke
please winter end
will you end
we get the goddamn point