Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

as I grow old enough to slow down
enough
to notice
I see the little windows
open and close on the past

there was the window
in last night’s dream
where my kids were
small again, asleep
in their once beds.
And the only slightly larger
window when their childhoods
were where we lived together
back there
all the windows open
to time

Visitation
is what they call it
we’ll visit as we stand in line
to hug her and murmur, only marking time
because we know better
we’ve been there, in her spot
near the casket and we know
this day will be lost
but the days, months, maybe years to come?
Those are the days we’ll be needed for deep visits
This? This is just a formality—
A reminder memo that everyone we love
and everyone we don’t
Everyone we know—and everyone we don’t
we’re all going to die, probably not
today though somebody’s dying today—
So remember and decide
to either sit very, very still
and hope to escape death’s notice
for another day or get up and
Go, out into your world
and live the day

the number 9 in the house number
lost a nail
now dangles at an angle, drips rust
onto the yellow vinyl siding
snow piles into the laps
of wicker porch chairs
green plastic wreath,
with its shiny red ribbon,
flaps in the end of January breeze
Overwhelmed
is the label you’d place
on a photo of this place
Overwhelmed already so don’t
ask, don’t even knock
with that smile on your face

five below zero
all the candles lit
for the glow

A poem revved
its cold engine next to me
I waved it off

Sorry, I said—
Today, I’d rather
breathe and stare
at nothing for a while

another gift of long practice—
not every time
do I have to grab those words
and pull hard

not all hungers darken
if unfed. Some, with
years of steady love,
will shrug, curl into
themselves for a nap
and say—maybe, later

Our overarching theme:
The unlived lives of women.
It hung above us, stolid and
weighty as a museum exhibit.
We searched for a spot to
set down such an unwieldy package
its plain brown paper creased
and crackling in our hands,
tied with twine.
More than one of us
settled on the kitchen
because this is where they lived
or served their time
or sang in if it was a haven
kitchen as hidden heart at the center
beneath all the wrapping

another definition:
there’s a neighbor plowing our driveway
after work, in the January dark.
He stops when the the fire siren blares
and our town is small enough
that I know why
and worry he won’t get his dinner
until very late

after Epiphany, there are changes
to the roadside light-up display
Whoever it is, the mystery curator
in charge of this once-empty field
removed the nativity scene.
Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, gone.
Santa and his sleigh left last week
all that’s left among the corn stubble
and snow sparkle—three snowmen,
a couple of reindeer and one lone donkey
stayed behind to flash and shine this January gloom away.

only one thing
will be in the news today,
and for once it won’t be
this virus.
But at five a.m., it’s still
peaceful and dark and I
am quiet enough to hear
the furnace kick on.
How many times each winter?
And we were all asleep
or gone or all making
too much noise to notice.
So today I say thank you
sweet hidden furnace,
wonderful pipes,
beloved old-fashioned steam radiators
for warming us through childhood
and adulthood and so many news cycles
winter after winter
whether we heard you or not.

year after year, I put away the holiday
as do the neighbors who line our street
with Christmas trees at the curb
I sweep the floors, begin picking up words—
small words, short moments,
haiku with their gorgeous spareness,
one lit candle on a clear desk,
how the smallest joys
hold the day aloft—tiny poem,
unlikely purple bloom in the garden,
or looking out the bedroom window
last night, smiling because
one neighbor’s tree
is still lit

deep blue sky over
rooftops before dawn—
Indigo
color that rolls off the tongue
in the same shade that swept
across the almost morning sky
of a new year