Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

I know it won’t last, because that’s how it is; spring comes in fits and starts”
                                                                                  ~dapplegrey @ Invisible Horse

Two lovely posts at Invisible Horse inspire hope for spring:
Oasis of Color and Going Back For More.

Another tiny miracle
arrives
in Winter’s frozen box.
Somewhere, the grass
has greened, the wide field
covered itself in fragile violets
and bright, sturdy crocus.
If you lay down on the ground
through the damp you can feel
more green gathering itself to grow.
I know all this is happening
on this same planet
because you
another world away
showed it to me.
Enormous miracles
are not required.

Sip it slowly,
at first. Tiny servings,
a jigger, a shot of silence.
Ignore the ocean of quiet waves,
far from shore,
on all our paths.
You do not have to
swim across today.
If you dwell on the ocean,
you panic and flail,
drowning in all the ways
you’ve ignored yourself—
All those nights desperate
for a crowd, any crowd,
parties, dinners, sports,
in a pinch, the shopping malls
and 24-hour grocery stores.
Instead, a cup, a pint until
you remember how
to love the ocean.

holds the air
as summer never will.
Bird’s song, traffic, children in the trees,
muffled, tucked away by
storm windows, closed doors, falling snow
in concert, singing to the world,
Hush, now
and Here, hold this:
a mug of cocoa
a cup full of quiet.

Winter makes a statement here,
impossible to drown out or ignore.
Metaphors cling like snow to sidewalks,
analogies thick as icicles hang from the eaves.
Blizzards rush in, so thick and sudden
your only job is to get home and stay there.
Then there are storms like this one:
Flakes so tiny
it looks like no snow at all.
Only when you are deep in the middle
do you realize and name it.
Feel how sharp those tiny bits of ice,
see how they build up around your house, your heart
without you seeing them, without recognizing and
naming the danger—
Till divorce or springtime are
the only things immense enough
to guide you through the storm.

According to this meditation book, we each possess
a vase—no, we each are a vase—that’s it—
And we, says my book, decide what to fill ourselves
with and we can choose Positive Self-Talk. It doesn’t
mention what falls or drifts or tips accidentally
into my vase. What am I to do with
leaves and snow, pollen, road salt, insects,
occasional tiny frogs or salamanders?
Ferns? Candy wrappers? Cottonwood?
This river otter?
Obviously, I’ve fished out the candy wrappers.
But otherwise, I decide I’m keeping them—
Strayed far again from cool and carefully
Detached. Instead of a clear vase of good intent
I’ve gone and built an ecosystem and
crawled out of the river of me and I’m sitting on the bank
listening to the frogs on the lily pads of me,
watching that river otter happy at the far edge of me,
deep in my cattails and here comes some salmon, for dinner,
and a blue heron for awe and mighty luck.

Make oatmeal, not poems
On the mornings words freeze
Or move as slow sludge deep
Inside a region we don’t
Discuss, someplace you can’t
Reach into and stir.
Unlike oatmeal
Which will wait forever.
Stirred easily, heated,
It transforms.
Add pecans, some blueberries,
A dash of cinnamon
As changed, as built from
Very little, as delicious as
A poem.

Late last night, while the wind rattled at the windows, I finished reading my book club’s choice, The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey. Knew I had to make an attempt at a poem about the experience.

Story behaved as if discovered
not invented or made up,
not easy in its unfolding
this Found thing, unearthed with effort,
solid as a boulder, real as a red fox.
It did not need our eyes on it
as, led down from the mountains,
it turned from fur to words on a page.
Wary creature, deep stone, could only be told
by one who knows and loves.
It followed a storyteller who did not forget,
who made sure to fold all that matters
into a tale of snow and wilderness,
magical children, lanterns to skate by
beneath a cold sky, northern lights,
swan wings sewed into wedding gowns,
loyalty and long, long loves,
the whole salted with tears
and found joy.