Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

Pink
curtains, broken window
collapsed roof, pigeon roost
farmhouse
abandoned
by everyone else

across the road
the not abandoned after all
trailer in the weeds
this morning
after many quiet years
light at every window

springtime and the lines
between people show
where snow melted away
ice flecked gray lingers
in shadows sun can’t reach
But this is spring so soon
rain will help and melt
what’s left of winter
then it’s flowerflowerflower
everywhere

People tell you childhood
or high school or college. Pity them because
it might be true for them. Not for you.
For you, my wish is that
you notice every treasure age.
Some glow as they happen
all the taverns lit, music turned up loud
while others grow more lovely
mellowed by a backwards glance.
Don’t flip through the years of
all your ages searching for the
Best One. But still, this age right here?
Enjoy this one.
Every limb still works
though early morning creakiness
is a reminder to cherish what won’t last
Forever. And there’s enough money–
Ignore Anyone who tells you
that you need a lot of it or that it doesn’t matter.
They’re both wrong. But enough
to always know you can pay
the rent with enough left to buy
a book whenever you want?
That’s a very good age
Also it’s the age when
neither your parents nor your children
get to tell you what to do
!
This age of balance
when you juggle slow and easy
standing awake and almost
(almost)
effortless
on the teeter-totter of today
Whatever age you get there?
That’s a good, good age

because
I am so often
away

What better training
than him
to teach me
Stay

All these poems
don’t come from a teaspoon
sipped from a lake.
It’s closer to a net
a patched and ragged
net hauled up from the ocean–
Here’s the fact that
you’re going to die
and so am I,
but it’s tangled up
with my student’s earnest
face as he described how
to catch a mole with bare hands
and where in the wild
to set it free
And that’s mixed with
grocery lists, clean socks,
stray strand of tinsel,
whether or not
to buy a truck,
fresh eggs, phone bills,
and green mysteries
sprouting in our garden
and that bird, the one
singing right this second
Outside, in the dark

Here
there’s time enough to
pay bills or write poems, not both
this season of lack

There
at your house, socks, book,
under a blanket, hiding
till life gets better

Outside, spring is here
We compare vaccine schedules
Plot out our escape

Dear Friend,
who sounded so sad
on the phone
This isolation goes
on and on
and on
No new ships
stir the horizon.
It’s easy to forget
the one habit
this world
will never break–
things change.
Soon we’ll see a splash of color
coming closer
Someone’s on the deck
carrying champagne.
Listen just yesterday
in my garden
under the dead leaves
one tiny purple flower

Good mothers should get to decide
which memories their children hold onto
as if sorting through an enormous file cabinet
discarding that unfortunate dinner hour
keeping that rainy afternoon with cookies

Wait! That’s horrifying, you say
all you children of mothers
Who wants her poking around your mind?

Well, calm down. Only good mothers
get this option and who gets to decide
if they are good or not? Right. That’s us, sorted.

So then—easy fix. If none of us say
our mother was a good mother
then we’ve locked them out.

Oh. wait. There she is already
and always was–since before
you were born and there she’ll be–
rattling around at odd, inconvenient
moments as if our minds were mansions
and she can walk through all the rooms
examining the furnishings–picking things up
and setting them down again
forever

another string around a finger,
reminder to Look. Count the birds
on my morning drive
some days, six
some days, sixty
or more
some days, the birds conspire
to help, fly close and fast
past my windshield
Yesterday, sixty-four
Mostly dark but startle of
one red-winged blackbird
one jay flashing by
blue-blue-blue

I’ve decided.
I can predict the future.
I bought my friend
a funny notebook. On the cover
a lady in a pillbox hat, a label
that read “Unexpected Turbulence”
Two weeks later? Her troubled
twenty-something daughter moved home

You might be thinking
trouble in their twenties is not
Particularly
Unexpected.
True.
I predict it could happen
to you or to someone you know
and soon.
See?
Right again.

there are doors we are

there are doors we are
meant to leave open
and there are doors we are
supposed to close.

Deciding which one
you are
right this minute
standing on the threshold of?
Work of a lifetime.