Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

birds sing in the trees
before leaves or nests, sing though
the world is still dark

Today I worry about pillows
lugged through life by my children.
My children
Who wander the world,
each with their pillow
tucked beneath an arm.
Remember how I cradled
their sweet and sweaty heads
when they woke from naps?
Naps in clean soft beds I made.
I remember. Them? No, they are
Busy
balancing those pillows
while they walk
Busy
ignoring the hovering
worrier who watches to see
where their pillows rest tonight.

Now, sleepy as a seed
buried deep in spring mud
dreaming lazily of this
week-end’s house party, full of
old friends and anticipation.
The forecast:
Warming Trend Straight Ahead.

Something about distance.
You are standing on my front porch calling me
on the phone, wondering where I am.
I am far away
Just last night, a different distance—
Dinner with the transformed boy
I haven’t seen in thirty years.
Across the table, talk of flying to Denmark
for Easter, back again the next day.

I think we should all put down our forks and
phones and wineglasses, and pause

a moment, pause right here, touch the space we inhabit,
marvel at this magic world where
we rise above time and place where
we can leap tall buildings
for the sweet sound
of each other’s voices.

Finally arrived,
the original boy band
sang all night outside our windows—
Spring peepers
waking up
to serenade the forest.

Carried all week, small stone of story in my luggage.

How did we progress, in the span of a grocery line,
from paper or plastic to powwows, you asked.
For a moment, I have no idea. Then trace it
back to him admiring my beaded necklace
while he scanned and tallied our groceries.
He told me it reminded him
of ones his aunties made to sell at powwows
and had we ever been

And now, all these days later, time to write this down
before life rushes it away. Turns out what I hold isn’t
the small magic, sweet berries of talk with strangers,
or even the glow of you and I
with so much to say to each other
that a week won’t hold it all.
Turns out what I now hold is this:
The look on his young, faintly acne-scarred face
when I asked if he went to powwows, too
along with his aunties.
Oh yes, he said, eyes Alive,
But not to sell bead work.
He smiled, quiet and proud,
as he bagged our groceries.
At the powwows,
I dance.

At my kitchen table, you teach me
to pay a certain attention to the world,
a watercolor lesson—
focal point, brushes, perspective—
What
Draws the Eye?

Later, I take your lesson on an evening walk
everywhere
I look a focal point a shape
a new perspective

Which is why you saw me
dazed and open-mouthed near the park—
conducting an experiment
in shifting focal point—green
shadows of pine on the ridge, or
abandoned mitten in spring mud at
my feet?

Children’s voices rise from the ball field
over all these shifting pictures, this pure
sound of focal point, light and high,
like a flock of small
excited birds

I dreamed of doors and students
both locked.
Racing through the night
I crossed enemy lines
carrying knowledge like water.
All that rush,
all those sloshing buckets
for nothing. The key, when found,
turns easily in the lock,
closes, opens.

Turn the drama in your head
into musical comedy—
financial woes, toothache,
car repairs, cranky teens, those
lines around your eyes
Transform when set to music.

Like the trick you could do once:
Blur your eyes, turn the world
into a Monet water garden

Reframe the ashes from the fire
into falling stars that glimmer
in your hair like snowflakes

Turn the monster at the window
to a friendly beast searching
for a bowl of warm milk

Let the thick black binder
labeled Worst Case Scenarios
become a journal trimmed in glitter

Write some stories you can
walk in— full of gardens,
full of laughter and adventure,
and quiet rooms with soft beds.
Relax. Outside, those old
abandoned black scenarios
crumble into the ground,
fertilize the garden plants
forget-me-not, impatiens,
rosemary for remembrance.