Stories from the world surround us if we listen.
It tells us tales we already know
and half-forgot,
the way you try to recount a dream over breakfast
frowning when you can only recall a shade of green
or a secret about to be told
hiding in the next turn of the stairwell
The trick is to listen. The world’s response, inevitable
The trick is
to find your own way—
where meaning and metaphor
meld
just as we melt together, half awake in the night
****************************************************
We talk on morning walks, the world and I.
I let the dog lead, with few rules. Sniff whatever
but only pee on street signs, utility poles, fire hydrants
Not the neighbor’s lawn ornaments bird baths realty signs
Never go back. Move ever forward.
The dog stops to drink from a puddle,
which he prefers to our kitchen’s clear water in his china bowl
I’ve known men like that.
Haven’t we all known men like that?
Down the block, the possibly stray black cat cries alone outside a back door
Oh, there have been long seasons of grief in all our lives, and will be again
And I’ve had whole years
sharp as the shards of broken glass
we swerve to avoid by the side of the road
None of us get to miss all the shattering
You have had those years too, I know
but today,
the world’s best story waits in my own garden
where enormous white hydrangea are barely blooming
weeks and weeks behind the rest of their kind
Mine are covered in beginner blossoms
and, as so much does these days,
it makes me think of you, love
of this romance whose weeks I’ve stopped counting
I choose instead what my hydrangea echoes back—
Savor this—
this leisurely flowering
the tissue paper blossoms
unwrapping
themselves
slowly—-flower by flower, chapter by chapter,
on this day, and then the next.
Enjoy every minute, every page of this, says the world
And ever practical, always recycling for its own sake,
the world adds—save all this softness. Later you can use it
to wrap all these scented moments
memories any girl would want to keep
Puff Of Smoke Poems 