Still Air

No wind this morning, so the smoke from the chimney across the yard doesn't lean.

It goes up the way a child puts up a hand before it knows the answer: straight, and a little too long.

Five degrees. The cloud sits on the roofs like a lid nobody means to lift today, and under it the smoke

thins out at about the height of the aerial, and doesn't come down. Somebody's kettle. Somebody's stove.

Other mornings I've seen it dragged flat over the tiles toward the river. This is the first one in a while

it has gone where it was going.