By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
My Uncle’s Cigar
Cigar smoke
blows my Uncle’s Cessna
over the Andes
home
where he strikes a match
lights another Habana
Hand rolled tobacco leaves
crackling
into an amiable glow:
Incense
granting my childhood prayer for peace
with three months of Mexican music
blasting from car radio
Driving up Interstate 5
to Torrey Pines
the beach to ourselves
Suntan lotion
anointing bodies
my uncle laughing
waves larger than ocean
Silver dollar handshakes
stories of my father’s car
conveniently breaking down
in front of my mother’s family home
Daily mass
cloudy talk of Bolivian drug lords
offering my uncle (a Catholic priest)
suitcases of cash
to smuggle cocaine across borders
the rosary supplemented
with a .38 caliber revolver
packed under his pillow
I might not have arisen
from an early death
where it not for his modest humility
translucent letters
hand typed on another continent
the 50 bucks he airmailed
for every A on report cards
A thin line
his love
casting words
into my stained glass windows
when I left his beloved mother Church
I excommunicated him
for judging
my break from sacred belief
to experience
Now
years after his descent into
aplastic anemia and death
I regret the ashes
I left on his forehead
and I light a cigar
the way elderly women light votive candles in echoes of churches