Lighter
I was watching a war movie
It’s Memorial Day, and so there are
Lots of war movies on
And two military guys are lighting
Cigarettes
With a metal lighter, and
I remembered
I’ve never smoked a cigarette
And never wanted to
The smell is enough to stop me
But I always liked the smell of
The lighter
Steel and lighter-gasoline and oil
And whatever
As I watched, the lighter clicked
The smell came back to me
It’s childhood, and someone must
Have had one of those lighters
Not my father who smoked a pipe as
Pipe lighters are different
And he was just as likely to use matches
Someone, though, because today
I know that smell
I should try the lighter again
After all, a fine Pennsylvania product
The Zippo lighter
Will it smell of oil and substance,
Will it smell of memory?
I’m not sure what I’d so with such
Equipment
I guess carrying around a source of
Fire
Might be a good thing
A needful thing
As prudent as memory
Sometimes
C L Couch
Cool Zippo Lighter Wallpapers Many HD Wallpaper
clcouch123 
June 1, 2018 at 3:39 am
Neat piece. I’m sure those special lighters were useful for more than cigarettes, I hope. A survival necessity. You’re right though, there smell is very unique, although, I can’t recall where I last smelled it. An older relative using one, perhaps a few, as I can remember the scent now.
June 4, 2018 at 3:21 am
Thanks! I’ve never had a lighter. I guess I’ve always used matches. My dad used a pipe lighter, but I never knew how. Maybe sharing a lighter helps folk feel lighter. Some vets or smokers or both will have to tell me!
June 4, 2018 at 7:05 am
Form of socialization I guess. My Grandpa was a Pastor and was more of an introverted guy, liked small town churches more than the city. Grandma was very talkative and social so it worked well. But, back in the day in the 1960’s, his profs at the seminary told him to take up smoking with the men to make friends with them. So, he’s about 30 at this time. But this side of the family has bad lungs. Grandpa stops at 50ish, but develops emphezima due to smoking and bad genes with lungs. Passes away at age 72. Quite young unless you have cancer or heart and stroke issues. His heart was going at runners pace for 20 years and he was in hospital when it finally gave out.
We have here little butane lighters, I think they’re called, that work much better as lighters. Their smell is distinct, but so are matches, and also cigars and those old lighters your dad had, or old vets .
With Grandpa, it was before filtered cigarettes, and they rolled their own, using matches and I see, to recall him having an old lighter like you speak of.
Ironically, my great-godmom, who smoked most of her life and quit at about 80, lived until 98 when she died of lung cancer causing her heart to fails. Can you really say at 98 the cancer killed her? If it didn’t something else would’ve soon . Ironic that her lungs were so resilient.
Grandpa, and at least 2 of his brother’s died from smoking. He and Clarence were Pastors, and his oldest brother, who I never met, was a mailman in his mid-fifties. Clarence I think I was almost 80. Strangely, in their kid pictures my Grandpa and Uncle Clarence looked the most alike too — even more than their twin sister and brother. There were 11 of them.
I’ll stop rattling and comment on one of your poems tomorrow. Enjoy your Monday!
Sorry for the Segway, it just made me think of this.
June 4, 2018 at 5:23 pm
I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather. He was advised to smoke and then suffered the worst result. My grandfather smoked, lost part of his throat because of it, and kept smoking. Died from it a little while later. My grandmother or my mother smoked and one day decided to quit and did. Most men I knew who smoked smoked pipes: my father, the chair of my department in college, a good friend of mine from Toronto, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien. I tried it for a little while, but I guess it didn’t take. Now my heart doctors would kill me if I tried again. My parents both died from cancer, though it doesn’t seem to have been cancer from smoking. My grandmother died at 92–and, yes, I think there comes an age when one dies simply from being that age, like your great-godmom at 98 (Wow!).
I hope your week is off to a grand start.