Gathering things into piles
we’ll sort tomorrow
is how our lives
grow dusty,
how all the facets
in the diamond of possibility
lose their luster, dim,
and wink out.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
Diamond Of Possibility
Gather Is A Verb
An action word
can fool us—
Spinning in circles
is not the same as
climbing the mountain.
This Same Boat
Hospitals feel like high school—
waiting rooms filled with people
who have only this in common—
the anxious, the overtired,
the giddy, the lonely, the tattooed,
groomed, tattered, athletic,
and those who only move in herds,
all of them, all of them,
with too much to carry
and their eyes fixed on the door.
About The Authors
The shy boy, who never speaks in class,
raises his hand now, when the subject matters.
How much violence, he wants to know, how
much gore can he include in his novel
of a science experiment gone horribly wrong?
Next to him, the girl doodling flowers
says she hasn’t started yet but
is thinking of a children’s story
about a pony, or possibly a unicorn.
Later, face shining, she stops me in the
crowded hallway to show me ten pages
of scribbled notebook paper.
She says, I’ve changed my mind.
Now, it’s a romance.
Cinema
The old stars were sunlight once
Movie theater, closed 30 years,
shuttered and dark,
brick and mortar slowly dissolving in time
until just now, when pale November sun
reached across the abandoned parking lot,
and climbed the tall back
where the screen used to be.
For a long dawn moment,
the whole building glowed pink,
warmed and beautiful
in the light of all this attention.
Disaster Preparedness
is the skill I’m trying to unlearn.
I work hard at picturing disaster
not stalking us at all, but rather
losing interest, wandering off.
If disaster stumbles into my door,
I want to be surprised.
When I hear that all day
tornadoes swept the Midwest
I add more curry to the soup
to smoke out trouble while
I balance the phone to my ear.
Those high winds
you remind me
are headed straight for us.
Emily
My beautiful aunt
with her black hair
and bright red lips
was the one
the rest of the family
told stories about.
She didn’t care.
Laughing at their gossipy ways,
she pulled them close,
told them another story,
kissed their befuddled cheeks.
On my own gray days,
it cheers me to remember those faces,
that flock of dour Scotsmen
surprised at what they made—
one red flower dropped in their midst
thriving in a field of rocks.
On Your Trail
Calmness has been trailing you
for years now. Can’t you feel
its breath at the nape of your neck?
It follows, resting at the place
where a mother cat gently
tugs her kitten’s soft scruff.
Be warned. If you stop, it may
catch you. And then where
will you be?
Not on track,
not on task, but
off the road somewhere,
in a meadow
just you and
Calmness, tending you with
its sandpaper tongue
and low purr.
I Need A Poem, Here
I need
a poem
some days,
a reminder
to Breathe,
built
of tiny lines.
Each pause
a place to
rest,
a soft red pillow
shaped like the suggestion
of a stop sign.
The poem puts out its hand,
whispers, Wait, and
look both ways:
Snow dusts
the dark morning.
Houses glow and simmer,
dawn and lamplight
meet and kindle
at every window.
Now, stretch
and breathe
into the new day.
That’s the kind of poem
I need now.
