My first smoke of the day usually comes as evening descends, and often enough as midnight turns. So it turns out my first smoke of the day often happens in the dark beginning of tomorrow's day.
But once in a while I steal out to local woods at 4 or 5am, rustle through the old leaves and nestle into the crook of a hardwood tree that with its roots forms a good cradle and windblock, and slowly, coldly, dawn as the world's dawning.
The pipe's lonely ember is a companion in the looming forest dark. Wisps of sidestream and rising smoke show me that the windy fates move mysteriously -- effortlessly -- to and from.
The rising of the day's light and the rising of the smoke are both so faithful and also so different in nature, as may be our aspirations. I feel a longing to be as stable as the day and as free as the self-disappearing smoke. Embraced unfailingly by tree, earth, and morning, the longing takes on the nature of unspoken prayer.
Sweet traces of smoke. It's as if longing and the arrival of morning are not two different things.