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.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
The Charm Of 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.
Climbing This Mountain
Add this on the mountain of impossible tasks:
carry Confidence in your children.
Be clear and certain of its weight
like a rock in your knapsack, solidly itself.
Now, its time is here.
Bestow it, confidence given as a gift
when you send them out
into the world that they can handle
whatever stones trip them along the way.
Let go of hoping they need you.
Let go of fearing they need you.
Let go of all that wishing,
all your pebbled memories.
Open your tightly closed fingers.
Let that rock you love nestle
into the ground at their feet.
With your empty fingers
raise your hand and wave.
Acoustic Summer
Summer has a soundtrack–
Cicadas and the clink of ice cubes in tea,
water making itself heard
against the dock, the shore,
the fountain’s pool.
In the middle distance,
backdrop of this art,
barking dog, laughing child,
whirr of bicycle tires
on hot pavement,
creak of window fans.
Beneath it all,
so constant, so soft,
reminder call of
the mourning dove.
Learning To Subtract
This too, is part of your job, harder than toilet training or teaching addition.
Don’t pound on the opaquing glass between you and them. Don’t
tap their shoulders like the nervous bird you are. They are
ready, eager to get into the world. Don’t do anything
to make them turn around. But in case they
glance back, you should be Waving.
And, of course, you should
be Smiling as you Wave.
This, too, is part
of your
job.
Favorite Recipe
Our whole week was a recipe
called Indulge.
Days beat gently past us, like slow
waves or like soft, sure hands
kneading bread dough.
The world was warm.
Languid and gleeful,
we submitted ourselves
to the pummeling,
allowed ourselves
to be shaped for
Rest.
Now, like following a delicious recipe
known almost by heart, it is time
to move on to the next step.
Now, we are set to Rise.
Drowning In Coffee Foam
But
what a way to Go
says the bee perched
on the rim of my cup of
Cappuccino
Peach Tree
The tree in the yard
so filled with ripening peaches
that we must brace the branch
or lose it:
Define Plenty
His Work In This World: American Fairy Tale
As we punch our alarms, brush our teeth, hurrying,
the old man takes his seat in front of a rusty green trailer on Route 24.
Five days I’ve seen him now, parked on his kitchen chair
at the side of the road, waving to the cars that pass.
He is the main character in this American Fairy Tale,
set exactly here to dispense Safe Travels,
Comfortable Dinners and Sleep Full Of Magical Dreams
to all who wave back.
Don’t wave and there’s trouble ahead—a fender-bender, a burnt roast,
a sleepless night.
Almost no one, of course, ever figures this out.
I wouldn’t have either,
except I stopped my car today,
thinking I was Lost,
and so learned the twist in this tale.
Here, in his story, no horses, no forests,
no travelers who’ve missed their path,
nor displaced royalty searching for
Dragons
Treasure
or Magical Birds
Or at least
none wise or lucky enough to stop their car
and ask directions from an old man.
