Smoking jacket of autumn

I got on the bus
and my driver was the Marlboro Man
How does that bode
for a Monday morning
Falling like his face
in craggy folds
Like ridges of sand descending a dune
In the desert

It's been a sunny November
like a spring reprieve
Shiny, almost too bright
Between the splayed and barren fingers
of autumn trees
Castoff leaves in too-late piles
Taunting the day's persistence
Like a challenge

It was unremarkable
Nothing exotic-mundane
But some days your head feels
like a fish-eye lens
And everybody's
off-kilter-closeup-zoom
distortions
preceding a crisis

And the driver
Has been strangely swallowed by his horse
It's a rolling gallop
Insides full of sticky handholds
And discarded coffee cups
that scar his dignity somehow
he lights nothing up
from the inside