Cigar?

Celebrations for art’s biggest star

In Great Britain, at ninety, now are

Grief for art’s smokin’ man

A year short of that span—

Really close, but alas, no cigar!

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud. The poem was prompted by the BBC obituary “David Hockney: Art’s great innovator whose vivid paintings made him a household name.”