Stress
A tangle
a knot
that tightens
to hold a perfect
Center.
Breathe.
Do it again.
Oh, lift your eyes
Look at the sky
softly snowing
Look at the bare maple
stretching its branches
to gather the snow.
Loosen yourself
Let stress unfurl
its cramped limbs. Let it
become the deep green
leaves, the flower
it dreams of, deep in
the heart of the knot.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
How To Untangle
Lies For Home And Travel
Written in response to a prompt in The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockwood. Though this wonderful book encourages much revision, I enjoy the prompts for my first-draft, slapdash, on the run efforts at a daily poem—quite a different animal than polished, much revised and burnished poetry—the difference between a dollar store coffee mug and a Ming dynasty teacup.
Today, I am going to say I travel.
I’ll say, I’m leaving for Europe—
Though I never travel so far—
Just to picture myself packing, then
Unpacking in a foreign hotel.
I love the casual tone of friends who travel,
Those who say Barcelona or Mykonos
Without exclamation,
The way I might say hardware store.
Today, I bought a leather bag
With a cunning little passport sleeve
Though I don’t have a passport.
I hoped the store clerk might ask, Where…?
Which they didn’t. But I was prepared.
Scotland, I might answer. Edinburgh.
Or Florence or Tokyo, the names all lies,
Intoxicating promise on my tongue.
When I travel in real life, it is business
Or family—Cleveland, Atlanta, Houston.
I study departure boards, imagine myself
Hopping instead on the next flight to Paris.
I love it in my head, to think of my bag full
Of silk shirts and fountain pens, me walking
Cobblestone streets bristling with cathedrals
And cafes, music and pigeons in the square.
Though we have pigeons here.
And lies aside, the truth is this—
Home from Cleveland, I will open my front door,
Not with a thrill, but a deep persistent joy at the word,
The very sound of the word, Home.
February Forecast
Winter burns us brittle.
Don’t make any sudden moves this month.
When we brush against each other
to warm ourselves on these banked fires,
move slowly,
so pieces of us don’t break off
in all this bone deep cold.
Her Mind, It Wanders
That’s what they say at the home.
So I picture her, little old lady with
a knapsack on her back, touring Europe,
eating baguette and cheese and grapes
on a hillside, surrounded by her traveling
companions—not scruffy college kids, but
Earl who used to farm near her farm,
Alice from the room down the hall,
Robert, Mabel, and Louise, who always
sing along on days the music therapist
visits and plays the battered old piano
in the common room, songs they know
by heart. If she wanders, let her friends
come too. If she wanders,
let it be far into joy.
In Hiding
No poem today
Head full of clever lines
Leading to blank walls
Painted to look like doorways
Always another corner
Laughter and the clink
And ring of silverware and crystal
Down a corridor
Music from another floor
And the mysterious splash
Of a fountain in a hidden garden
Like everything else
Just out of sight
Winter Metaphors
Always surprised by it,
I remember again:
Everything is a metaphor
if I dig down far enough
if I breathe quietly and
hold out my hands.
Don’t search frantically,
as if looking for a lost child
or digging out after a snow storm.
Search patiently, by
waving as the children go, by
walking through the snow as it falls,
wearing the scarf you knit for me,
your cure for stress
warmed and woven by your hands.
Wrapped in your cure, I walk through
snow and metaphors thick on the ground
and falling fast–
Glistening in my hair,
Melting into my skin.
Gift, Wrapped
See today’s gifts
Tumbled out of time’s
Woven basket, spilled
On the blanket spread
At your feet
All their meanings
Are wrapped in
Traffic, incessant phones,
Sour blueberries in
Five dollar pints,
Lost pens,
Grumpy students,
Grumpier teachers,
Gray ice, dirty windows,
Sun shining through the
Everyday winter grime
Maybe The Deer
aren’t as innocent as they look.
Maybe they are plotting
long into every night
to destroy all cars.
In this world, thick with deer,
maybe even now they are
hunched together in the woods
spreading topographic maps
with velvet noses or sharp antlers,
holding the corners down
with their hooves
while they assign roads to patrol,
a mission for each.
Work Advice
Approach work as if you were
another in the factory of craftsmen
building warriors in ancient China.
You do the same task all day–
craft torsos from long coiled ropes of clay,
Or form clay hands, empty or grasping a sword.
Or paint the eyes, adding features—a scowl,
a dashing mustache.
All day, turn your mind away from the ranks
of blank faces surrounding you, waiting for you,
the one in charge of fierce or sweet expressions.
When your energy fails, pretend a stranger
from the future whispers in your ear,
with news ridiculous but heartening:
They swear that centuries from now,
this enormous, crazy task
will be not an army but an art.
In Charge Of The After-Party
After the guests go, leftovers and wine glasses litter the table.
Leave it till morning, believe it’s your choice, just one messy secret.
In truth, it was planned–
The good china wine glasses teaspoons and coffee mugs conspired
To be left at the end of the cheerful night
Retelling each other, before it’s back to the cupboard,
How much fun we had.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 