Don't Smoke in Bed

for Angele Ellis

Though at the time, I apologized for making
the errant right turn that took us off our route
back home to Pittsburgh—sending us instead
to Vandergrift, the next town over from Apollo—
I feel the need to retract the apology I made to you.
At the moment, I was caught up in the confusion
of the labyrinthine streets laid out by Fred Olmsted
and a fear took over me, a fear that I would never
again track down the quite legendary Route 66,
never cross back over the Kiskiminetas River,
and we two poets—lacking any kind of GPS
or intelligent map-making cellular telephones—
would never get home to our fair city of steel.

But then, like some kind of omen of good fortune,
the large mural next to the old firehouse appeared
before us, and one of us said, "Hey, look at that—"
the other reading aloud the four words framing
the bed-ridden fellow. And I stopped the car
so we could take it in. You had to feel bad
for the bed-ridden smoker, and we did, but
we were also somewhat amused by the mural
and couldn't contain some laughter and I think
it was that laughter that eased me up enough
to navigate my way back to Route 66, back down
to Apollo, and back over the lovely Kiskiminetas,
the reception of the Pirates game just good enough
for us to get in, we two poets relieved to be back
on route, to be heading home, a valuable lesson
learned by both of us thanks to my wrong turn and the Vandergrift firehouse—"Don't Smoke in Bed."