Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

Happy anniversary to Puff of Smoke Poems, one year old today.

This is a chronicle of a year in my life, a year of getting through a divorce, recapturing possibility and lightness of spirit, and rededicating time to puttering around with words, giving them both the fun and the serious time they deserve.
Finding poetry in every day, writing it down, and posting it here has been a great gift this year. Many thanks are due to—

Samantha Bentley of bentlily.com : An apparently now-defunct, or at least on long hiatus daily poetry blog. You were my inspiration to begin, and checking in on your site often provides my inspiration to continue.
My Children: Supremely uninterested in poetry, thank you for being exactly who you are (which is someone who will never, ever want to read their mom’s poetry blog)
My Friends: Both those who know about, read, and offer encouragement here; and those who would be bored to tears by poetry, but keep me company on the road, always handing over the gift of someone to laugh and walk and eat with in this crazy life
My Followers: All few dozen of you, whoever you are. It is cheering beyond measure to know that some stranger out in the world read and responded, in feeling and in comments, to something I wrote. Astonishing and oh so gratifying. Thank you. May I and many other readers return the pleasure to you.

Here, to remind myself, is what I’ve learned from a year of writing and posting poems:
Poetry Saves You. Noticing the world around me, writing a poem every day, reading what I wrote, reading other poets, helped me re-imagine myself into a life, this life, where I write instead of yearning to write, where what I see and what I dream and what I learn simmer together into stories and poems. Where I’m reminded over and over that even the grayest, flattest, most ordinary day can be transformed by making your art. Given time and the respect of showing up when you say you will, more often than not, like loaves and fishes, attentiveness and faith transform your world and grant the gift of plenty —plenty of words, plenty of experience, plenty of joy, and plenty of gratitude.

When you stand at the opened
refrigerator door and tell me
there is nothing to eat,
I clamp my mouth closed
over the next line, the one
where I list the contents of
the rapidly warming shelves.
There is no fruit at all, you prompt,
since I seem to have forgotten my line,
certain I won’t be able to resist.

And you’re right.

Blackberries, pineapple,kiwi, grapefruit,
bananas, I list—
All things you can see, too.
You sigh, relieved
to be on familiar ground
the kitchen, your kitchen again.
but no strawberries, you say, no grapes, no oranges.

One  more week till you go back to college.