Amid the gnatty Georgia heat

(And oh, it was hot!)

A mother drags a cigarette,

And smashes it in a pot

Made of spiraling clay

Poisoning the air with a foul stench

Twenty feet

off the ground,

The makeshift ashtray perches on the back-porch’s railing

Stained black on the inside,

Carelessly caked with cinder,

Suffocating the tangerine-colored glaze beneath

Twenty feet,

As was proved,

Was too steep of a fall,

The dead grass too poor of a cushion,

For the decrepit tray

As it dusted toxic powder onto grass that could die no further,

Shattering at the whim of its betrayed adolescent creator

Though one evening,

The pot’s callous utilization bothered him no more

When there was nobody left

To pollute the atmosphere with that familiar stench,

Nor make the air just a bit hotter