So many bells, he says.
Every day here is broken into
the same question in every class
and many strict blocks of time.
Tired but polite,
the new boy from Pakistan
answers again.
Your country is so very clean
it feels almost like a movie set
where everyone must adhere
to the bells, the script,
the tight shooting schedule.
He gathers his books.
It doesn’t always look real
he says, as another bell rings.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
The New Boy
Her Masterpiece
My first masterpiece,
Girl I painted onto
the canvas of this world.
She took the brush
from my hand long ago
and paints her own picture now.
With bold strokes, she fashioned wry smile,
tender curls and curves.
Humming Broadway show tunes,
she deepens the layers around
her guarded heart,
glimpsed through surfaces
for now,
while her artistic confidence grows,
while she learns to trust this beauty,
this unfolding art of her life,
her own masterpiece.
Old Woman Who Shops: American Fairy Tale
She passes my house, empty-handed, wearing a kerchief over her gray hair, in a house dress and canvas sneakers, purse in the crook of her elbow.
She’s a little wobbly, teetering as she walks. But in an hour or two, she’ll pass by again, walking in the other direction, laden with bright yellow plastic bags from the dollar store at the edge of town.
I think I know where she lives, a rundown farm a mile east of here. And though we’ve never spoken, I’ve told myself a story about her, an eccentric in-law hanging on at the family farm, sipping tea from chipped mugs, filling time buying plastic trinkets made in China.
But today, for the first time, our eyes meet. I stumble into her as I rise from weeding the garden and she is passing the edge of my yard. Her eyes are bright and laughing. She reaches deep into her yellow bags and hands me one perfect peach.
Plenty more, she says. Enjoy.
And now I’ve written her a new tale, as juice runs down my chin. In this story, she is the guardian of fruit trees. She travels this way each year, lingering like summer, to hand us things that grow and remind us of where we live—this bountiful land full of gifts, not one of them priced at a dollar, not one of them made of plastic.
After All I’ve Done For You
Now, to the Good Mother List
of things I’ve done for you, I’ll add
last night, when I wanted
tea and toast in my pajamas. Instead
I drove to the city in rain and dark
for dinner with an old friend in a crowded restaurant—-
Not because I was anxious to see my friend or eat a $15 salad,
but for you and that question in your eyes
that wonders if I’ll be okay when you leave home.
Truth is, some days I’ll be content
playing my own music,
not cooking or tripping over your shoes,
watching Downton Abbey instead of James Bond.
And some days I’ll be bereft
mourning the lost country of childhood
we can never return to
an ache I can’t describe
which is just as well since you suspect
but don’t want to know
it exists.
Maple
Steady trunk standing so effortlessly in tree pose.
Above, green shadows,
the sound like water, but not,
like whispering, but not,
this sound that is only itself—
leaves saying something to the sky
or to each other
or to us.
Good Luck Signs
I tell my friends
It’s Good Luck to—
See a heron
Spill pepper
Dream of oceans
Take the first scoop of ice cream
Or the last lime.
They laugh and remind me that
I say a dozen things a day are good luck.
Also, they are pretty sure
I make them all up.
Well., you know what they say
about befriending fanciful liars?
That. I inform them,
Is good luck, too.
Personification
The world wakes each day,
rubs its eyes, starts the coffee.
Pictured like this, the world is
gentle as an old aunt who will say
Yes to your every request.
Travel through the news of war and ruin
and when they threaten to
overwhelm, use Personification.
If you picture the world
in its rumpled bathrobe
gathering its thoughts and oceans
while the bread toasts
you may both get through breakfast,
one of each day’s small joys, smiling,
before the news comes on
before the sky grows light enough
for the world to see the mountain
teetering outside its kitchen window.
The Charm Of Turtles
Along with your sleeping bag,
guitar, fishing pole, dirty laundry,
you bring me a souvenir from camping.
You like turtles, don’t you?
The question freezes me—
for one minute time shifts and you are
four, in love with everything in the world,
holding a toad bigger than your cupped hands
asking me to admire its gray-green self.
Turtles are nice, I say warily, remembering.
From your backpack you dig out a silver turtle charm,
enameled in bright turquoise. You shrug.
I bought you this because you like turtles,
you say, then hesitate, suddenly as uncertain
as when you’ve forgotten Mother’s Day again.
You do like turtles, don’t you?
I do now, is what I think.
What I say is Yes. Oh, yes, I love turtles.
Gorillas In The House
Amazing, that’s the truth. They were not expected, not what I went looking for. They were not the wild black dog I’d been catching glimpses of—dog that might be rabid, might be metaphor, might be just a shaggy black dog.
Instead, this white gorilla at the bottom of the squared, open stairwell. Quiet. Visible only because I leaned out so far over the stairs, metal railing pressed against my stomach, my hands gripping its cold circle, breaking my palms into sweat. Old air of baked dust rose up, mixed with the scent of metal touched by decades of hands.
I’ll remember this smell my whole life, I thought. And it will always take me here, to this single moment. The moment before I decide if I’m scared, the moment before the gorilla senses me. The moment before he raises his enormous head and looks up.
Summer Ends
Again, this circle.
Rain threatened to fall all day
both inside me and in the air.
The world grew colder. Clouds gathered.
The wind picked up.
It shook those
poor windows, so used to being
Opened to the breeze.
It took hours, mostly all day,
to remember: Words written down,
and autumn comfort food—soffritto
made with the last of the garden’s tomatoes
and yesterday’s bread. These were the cure,
the Art of making do with this particular life,
the one life I have.
Toast to it with the last of the wine.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 