Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

your birthday–
can you see us today
remembering
filled as we are
with buying strawberries
answering emails, going to jobs
and playing with puppies.
Anna said she bought
goldfish and ate them
in memory of you and
it took a full minute
to figure out she meant
Goldfish crackers–
Do you remember
that’s how things go here
Often
so busy
it takes a minute
to see the point?

long-hair man, bandana
few teeth
many tattoos, builds a
new wooden deck
on the ice cream stand

outside the farm market
stacked pallets of mulch
and a sign that reads,
this is a sign

roadside trailer’s front yard–
truck tire planter
spray-painted blue
holds forsythia in full bloom

furnace rumbles on
because I left our front door
open
to catch bird songs
in the still dark morning
sit down with this
frisky ball of puppy
One of us trolls through
Big Thoughts
about life,
about time and change
and loss
One of us quiets
and falls asleep with a sigh
while inside and outside
birds and furnace
continue their songs
Again and again
Someone hands me
a silver tray
heavy with gifts
and the clearest message–
Go ahead
make a poem
of all this

rain fell hard all night
Today
her funeral
two thousand miles
away.
picture she painted
just for me
long ago
has followed me
home to home
for decades
follows still
carries its bottomless basket
of sweet memories
keeping company
on this long day
when I should be
two thousand miles away

though I’ll never be ready
be ready
vacations end
move again through scheduled air
arranged but not by me
All these outside forces from weather
to my children
from work and students to
the size of a puppy’s bladder
or rain when we wanted to hike in sunlight
Instead, a vase for the tulips and bright
branches of forsythia
wild and lovely, breathing
in the outside world
But in a glass bottle or an old jar
on the coffee table
transformed to a tender startle

thought-less
Yesterday I gave this puppy
a white paper bakery bag
to play with what did I
Imagine??
Something a cat would do–
chase it or crawl inside headfirst.
You
walked away with it pleasantly
surprised.
House grew quiet
until I remembered
you are not a
Cat
and I learned that “horrified laughter”
is not an exclusively
literary expression
but a real sound that I
know how to make

we saw the sun rise
red fading to pink today
scent of the morning

puppy beside me
we read about Paris while
I wait for your call

two blocks away
rundown house
with no garden at all
raggedy yard
scatter of random purple
crocus and small white
flowering somethings

another year and
you are still
gone though when we
say glio blastoma now
we don’t frown
in puzzled
confusion while we say
those words
that sound like
a poem in Italian
but aren’t. Instead
we plan puppy cousin playdates.
For all you and I
Always
disagreed on,
for the way we frowned
Puzzled
at each other’s lives
I know this: you would
laugh to see these dogs,
to see us
here, now
on the other ends of
those leashes
and these years

better than bad poetry
I wish for you
a puppy sweet as this one
to remind you —
go outside before
sunrise when sky
is pale and you can all
listen
to birds wake
all of you see
the half-moon through
still bare branches
right now, this minute