My work in this world
wanders its cities in two bodies,
his, hers, once mine.
Bodies given, year by year,
all I knew of patience,
kindness, how a sense
of humor eases the rough patches.
But also captive witnesses to all
I knew of frustration, grief, anger.
Everything I had to offer
carried like a package inside their
own true selves.
And they go traveling
Half-formed and half-dressed
never bothering with a warm coat
determined not to shiver
and admit their mother was right.
They set off into this world that
will please and praise and batter them.
I chase them down the street,
waving mittens and advice, calling out,
Wait, there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
My Work In This World
Flat Tire
Conjuring combinations with my capable son,
who took a deep breath and set to work
as we compared owner’s manual
and all the tools we had, we taught ourselves
how they fit together.
Coatless, he worked, with breaks for heat
and the loaf of olive bread in the grocery bag.
Now, hours later, warm and dry and home
my mind stops for breath in
its endless effort to sort things into bins
Luck or Fate, Blessing or Chance.
Whichever punctured our tire, held off the rain,
sent strangers and the summoned
friend of a friend with a better wrench,
What I hold to now is the way everything happens
and then wraps itself with meaning: My son in the world
calm and hungry, knowing what he lacks
and ready to smile and open his hands
to welcome what he needs. I even know exactly
what he would say reading this, rolling his eyes:
Mom, a wrench is just a wrench.
Morning Drive Time Zen
Farmers drive muddy tractors
along the highway, hauling
disc harrows and cultivators
to break up the hard dirt
of fields frozen all winter.
In equipment not meant
for paved roads, they drive
slow and rickety.
Their students follow
in a long line of cars,
drivers late for work, learning
to appreciate the sunlight
as it falls across the wooded
hills lit bright green again
past dark fields waiting
for the plow.
All together now, hills,
fields, farmers, commuters,
Practicing patience
or not.
My Father Forgets
Poems happen quick
then get lost in the rushed
onslaught of a day and
I’ve gotten enough practice
to be able to (sometimes) see a poem
as it moves past me, as it pauses and my attention
glazes to the world around me for a breath and
the poem might as well be waving a white sign
that says, I Am A Poem in big blocky letters
because it’s that obvious. So some days
I get fooled into believing I’ll remember it.
But that’s not the way of a poem.
So here I am, hours later, frustrated,
tapping my forehead like my father does
when he can’t remember a name, as if tapping
might dislodge that name or this
poem and tumble them into our waiting hands.
But They Don’t Come Back.
Gone Is Gone. So pay attention and
take good notes or you’ll be left playing
with whatever words are lying around when
your actual subject has gone
wherever all those names go when my father forgets
and you’ll be left with no poem at all
like me, today.
Questions Who Go Out Searching For Answers
knock on doors in early morning
when the sky is the same gray as
mourning doves who love this hour
and the questions stop to talk
to any sleepy soul in rumpled pajamas
who answers the door and the questions
Ask, Which takes longer, to
pay bills or write a poem
dress for work or write a poem
pack lunch or write a poem
?
Plenty of smart, well-rested people
don’t answer the door so early.
Those awake are no wiser than
their sleeping, dreaming neighbors.
None of us knows the answer.
But here’s the new plan: Next time
the questions knock, let’s turn
their quizzical selves right back around,
grab our shoes and say we don’t know
but we’ll be happy to keep them company
while they walk.
Spring Crop
I come to compliment you on
loading the dishwasher without being asked,
proud of my continued efforts in the field of
Positive Reinforcement,
only to wind up yelling at you
for putting your muddy boots on the couch.
But why take them off, you ask, mystified–
when I’m leaving any minute now?
These are the conversations
that will
soon
walk out the door with you
and I’ll wait,
a hopeful, nervous gardener
to see how what I planted mingles with
what grows wild in this soil.
Watered with praise and benign neglect
and exasperation, I wait to see if
the spring crop sprouts into kindness
or tolerance, skill at negotiation
or laziness
or just mud on all your furniture.
The Recently Learned Difference Between Haiku and Senryu
Senryu: According to Merriam-Webster, “a 3-line unrhymed Japanese poem structurally similar to haiku but treating human nature usually in an ironic or satiric vein.”
Haiku
Goodbye to brown hills,
trees who scrubbed the spring blue sky
bristled like hedgehogs.
**********************************
Senryu
There are things I’ll miss:
Burping contests at dinner
isn’t one of them.
Abandoned
Here in this school
of bullies, prom queens,
ordinary kids still dazed by life,
and tragedies, both true and
imagined by fourteen-year-old girls,
Abandoned is the saddest story.
Here in this school
where we struggle with
grades and prom night,
illiteracy, the big game,
pregnant teens and faculty evaluations
his head with his floppy clean hair
is filled with where to sleep tonight.
Here in this school
where bells tell us when to
switch from chemistry to symbolism in
Shakespeare, forty-one minutes
to pack it neatly into uninterested minds
behind his shy, scraggly smile
he is learning about existence in a vacuum.
Here in this school
homeless, but not aimless,
he studies hard the art of absence
practicing how to disappear.
He is barely visible by the time we
remember to teach him this:
Every Body gets a space in this world
and people to notice them in it.
Senryu For Moms Too Tired To Count
City street at dusk
Eyes closed, she holds her sleeping
daughter in her arms.
Through the rain, I pray,
mother to mother, to ease
the long, cranky night ahead.
Talkable
You won’t be good at living alone,
my son tells me, because
you are too talkable,
his word combining
talkative and sociable.
And I am.
Talkable
describes me, plunging
into any conversation,
dipping my toes, paddling around,
always these same waters.
Now scared but almost ready
for the hidden pool
behind the waterfall
where the surface is still
and I am able
but do not talk.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 