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Holding it, I think of the hands that molded its perfect shape,
Hardened tired hands, skilled.
The eyes of the maker intent on their task,
choosing the leaves with care,
studying their grain, their strength, their age.
He sculpts the wrapper with the chevata
that has been passed down through his family
for six generations.
He holds the knife tenderly:
It will be his son’s one day,
along with the cedar platform
on which he prepares his masterpieces,
each one perfect,
each one unique.
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He uses the entubar method
an accordion folding of the filler leaves,
His carpenter-like hands working painstakingly
like the hands of a skilled surgeon,
molding the lungs of this beautiful beast
enabling it to breathe fire
deeply
in and out.
As I run it under my nostrils
slowly
I think of the land it came from,
a field of ghosts, dreams, heartache, and time.
I study its color:
“Maduro”, but really
a hundred shades of brown, all deep,
and I see the sun shine through the barns
as the leaves dry.
Eight weeks, they hang
waiting, maturing, deepening.
In my mind’s eye, I walk through the fields
with a sunburnt old man who speaks to me
of the land, first his great-grandfather’s,
now his.
He speaks in blazingly fast passionate Spanish,
and, though I don’t know his language,
I understand every word.
I hear his sons laugh as they run through the rows.
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Some say it is a sin to hold this cigar.
A sin to light it,
A sin to smoke it,
A sin to appreciate the spices, the leather undertones, the dark chocolate in its leaves,
the nuttiness in the
Connecticut broadleaf wrapper, and
the changing from bitter to sweet as the cigar warms and diminishes.
But I don’t think so,
because when I light it,
carefully turning the cigar so that it burns evenly,
and when I take in the smoke,
I taste God’s creation, His patience,
His careful deliberate timing.
I am reminded of
His appreciation for “the least of these”
and His tender affection for small bits of faith.
I am encouraged by the thought that everything,
every unnoticed, ignored thing,
the dirt, the rain, the time, the heat, the leaves,
become something so perfect and beautiful
when a thoughtful artist takes the time
to turn those ordinary things into something beautiful.
I am struck by the metaphor:
A cigar is life and death,
both so fragile and precious,
so humble yet filled with such splendor.
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I watch the smoke dance in the moonlight
As the cigar comes to life and begins to die.
I see the ash grow-evidence of the quality of the cigar
and the expertise of the hands which made it.
The cigar grows warmer in my hand as it shrinks,
I burn off the excess oxidation,
breathing new life into the leaves.
The blue flames sing:
Oh, the hope that lies in second chances.
A cigar is the wonderful terrible bitterness,
a compressed hard ignited beauty,
an intense, forceful,
quiet
exclamation point of life.