TOBACCIANA

The word ashtray has gone out of vogue.
Acquired unsavory connotations: too dirty,
too sooty, and stinking of nicotine
and tar from all those discarded butts
assembled inside. Kissing a smoker
is like kissing an ashtray, they warned us
in school, decades ahead of their time.
The preferred term now, at least on eBay,
where there is a category for tobacco collectibles,
is ash receiver. I know because the last year
my father was alive, I gifted him
an ash receiver for Christmas; a heavy
round one molded from aquamarine glass
with a notch at every compass point
and a pressed bark pattern stamped on its sides.
An identical model to the one that slipped
from his hand and shattered on the floor
just a few months before, after a lifetime
of accepting his snuffed-out stubs.
You don’t think I’m condoning smoking?
I asked my wife, as I wrapped it in tissue
and trimmed it with ribbon, who vehemently
shook her head, No. But in the end, it was all
for naught anyhow, my father succumbing
to cancer before he could extinguish
even a single Pall Mall inside its glossy
confines, his ashes in need of an urn
instead of some vintage, overpriced receiver.