Ordinary women with long-braided pasts, feasting on Greek salads–
heads bent over dishes thick with feta, dolmades, falafel.
Someday, I picture us eating this exact meal by the Mediterranean,
in sun dresses instead of wool, the water out our window a
wide blue sea salty as Kalamatas
instead of this narrow gray canal, dotted with ducks.
But here today, we make our own warmth with stories,
listening to tales of deaths, diets, miracle lotions, far flung dreams.
Eyes fill with tears, and clear again,
like the water glasses our patient waiter refills
as we recite the litany of our losses, which are many.
Look at us. Look at our bags laid down, at rest after being carried so far.
Look how we laugh, funny and hope-filled,
dreaming of beaches and Europe, wine country and cottages.
How beautiful we are–the way we dream those futures
but brush our hair today
and put on mascara we know will
be cried off before dessert
chances equal that our tears are from sadness
or laughing so hard we cry.
Either way, our hearts crack open over
this gift, this day of being ladies who lunch.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
Ladies Who Lunch
Roses In Winter
When my world feels pinched
And dry, I look at the roses you sent.
They arrived like messengers
From a far-off country
With urgent news–
Two dozen sweetheart faces from dark red
To pale pink, yellow, orange, peach,
And a soft cream the color
of vanilla and old lace.
Every time I see them,
Relaxed and blooming now that
All their traveling is done
Their soft faces urge me
To take a deep breath and remember
I can relax and bloom too
Having read their message:
There are places in the world where beauty grows
Even now, in the middle of winter.
Warming Trend
Late last night, the angel in the backyard
spread his wings and nearly spoke.
Today, all that’s left is an odd pattern
where the world is melting beneath my window,
as if the barn spent all evening practicing
snow angels on the ground.
City of Lacking
You’ve spent a life time
here in the City of Lacking
writing endless lists in your heart,
gray pebbles of all you don’t have–
a bit more of something:
Money, time, talent, beauty.
It’s time to move.
Now set up house across the green–
call it Joy Lane,
where the lists are of moments
laid out end to end or heaped together
glinting like hidden treasure.
Inoculation
When I was little and clever, nurses in crisp white uniforms appeared now and then at school, armed with sugar cubes and needles to protect us from many things. They assured us the diseases would be much worse than the shots. I remained unconvinced. But I always had a plan. Our teacher handed out half-slips of paper for our mothers to sign, one for each of the shots you’d need. Each disease prevented was on a different colored paper. A good year, you’d get just one color, or two and one was purple which was good because that one wasn’t a shot but something they squeezed from an eye dropper onto a sugar cube. Naturally everyone wanted to be protected from that disease.
On my walk home, I’d throw the papers away, cleverly hidden in a neighbor’s trash bin, as sneaky and smooth as if I was disposing of a body. Then my only job was not to look too smug on shot day when everyone else was lining up for pain.
Eventually I got caught and my teacher sent me home with a rainbow mountain of paper permission slips. Everything I’d avoided stapled together.
This is the story playing in my head all the time now, like a song the body forgets it’s humming, as I check the mail each day, waiting for the divorce papers to arrive, waiting for something I can sign.
Nearly Empty Nests
are crowded with artifacts.
The robin’s left with one strand of tinsel,
some dried grass, and a scrap of blue silk ribbon.
I get soccer cleats, Legoes
and the ruins of a medieval castle
built entirely of sugar cubes.
Resolution
Here’s to the year about to unfold:
My wish for it is not
to lose 10 pounds
or meditate
or change jobs
or exercise more
or learn Italian
or take a drawing class
or see the British isles
or try to appreciate opera,
or Shakespeare or sushi
or pay better attention
so that I notice she’s dyed her hair,
he’s shaved off his beard,
or any of a thousand other things,
besides hair, that I miss
because I live by distraction
with tiny breaks to remind myself
to breathe–
my wish isn’t even to remember
to breathe
without reminders—-which is so basic
you’d think I’d have mastered it by now—- no,
My wish is this—-
To stop expecting disaster.
I plan to stop planning
for the crises, all flavors,
tomorrow could deliver.
I know things crouch in darkness
and will pounce or be stumbled into
Eventually.
But this is the year I stop counting on them,
stop setting the table with good china for unwelcome guests
and listening for the doorbell as dinner bakes.
When troubles knock,
at least they’ll have to get their own damn dinner.
Poetry Birds
Some days I wake as a woman lit up
with impractical plans
for printing off poems
by all my favorite poets,
folding them into origami birds
and traveling through the city
trailing paper birds, all colors,
hiding them in plain sight
for you to find.
Snowstorm Saturday
Still snowing, but my closest neighbor
inside his homemade red and green shack
built on top of his tractor
is plowing his driveway already,
his tiny house protecting him from the wind.
He’s retired now and so has time
to turn his inspirations
into inventions.
All up and down my road,
I can hear the low-roar symphony
of snow blowers. And I’ve got to get out there myself
because I love to shovel snow without any motor at all.
But also, if I don’t hurry, my neighbor and his house
will clear my sidewalk and free my car
And because we’ve been here, side by side, a very long time,
I know he’ll be sitting inside his invention
shaking his head at my indolence
when he sees me through the front window
sipping my coffee, writing away.
And I want to shout Hey, I’m inventing here.
But he’d explain in his fatherly voice,
words on paper don’t count
when there’s snow to be cleared,
and so much practical work to be done.
Efficiency
In work boots and plaid and feed store cap,
he looked like an elderly farmer
next to me in the stationery aisle,
one calm spot in the supermarket rush hour.
He told me he probably owned a thousand pens.
Whenever a new one caught his eye he had to have it.
I smiled and backed away, tired, late getting home,
shopping list lost as usual.
Sometimes I have to be stern with myself:
There wasn’t enough time to stumble
into rambling conversations with eccentric strangers.
But he said he used them all,
nearly shouting as I reached the end of the aisle,
because there was so much to write and draw every day.
Hours later, I haven’t saved any time at all–
still wondering, wishing I could trade this back
for time to wheel my shopping cart closer
and ask him to tell me
what he’s drawing now.
