Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

On a cold night
our kitchen pipes
froze. All the wise
man advice said
Keep the faucet open
so a tiny heart of water
could always trickle
As in the habit of poems
some read each day
written each day
keeps some hidden part
of our selves unfrozen
open, flowing

A poem from last year that I searched for again, as a reminder for the year ahead:

For the coming year, resolve
your self to attend the moments.
Give the sweet and still seconds your focus
rather than tending the buzzing bees of Planning.
But do not swat away those busy,
well-intentioned bees.
Instead, offer a kind suggestion.
Place a new thought into their rushing minds, their
quivering planning bodies so ready
to make honey, to store honey, to prepare
to make a plan for more honey to be prepared…
Stop. Breathe. Suggest gently
that perhaps along with the carried pollen of plans
each bee might settle for a moment
one quiet moment
burrowed head first
into the center of the blossom
of now.

still in bed early
wishing on the rising sun
through the east window

Wishing on the new year’s sun
as on a birthday candle
Peaceful hearts
Joyful moments a
Happy year
for everyone I love
and everyone they love
oh, feeling generous,
wish it for all alive now
on this whirling planet
circling the sun I didn’t see
which turned out to be
a streetlight through the trees
a mistake I’ve likely made before

Certain Woods
at the edges of
Interstates or back roads
certain woods
are doorways, too
You’ll know them.
Remember how
light falls between those trees
how it lights on that hillside?
It’s easiest to recognize
on autumn afternoons
or anytime in winter, when
the bones of the world
show. See it there? A shape appears,
almost visible through the snow.

In another world, we were crows,
black and aloft. This memory is
why we watch them, wary with assigned
meanings, full of lore, legends abounding

Once, a crow got in our house—who knows how?
That’s how we learned of doorways between
Worlds where we are human and worlds where
we are crows. In some houses (in your house)
The worlds flow into one another In dreams, too.
Those are doors. Some books— Charles de Lint
traveled with his crow girls into some far places.
Another sign, another doorway-
The way your heart tightens when the flock lifts
all at once, from the snowy field.

snow flurries up, falls
where one cardinal lands

Shake This Maple’s World
may have been that cardinal’s
whole mission for the day
when he woke this morning

this week’s losses
include the words for
Advent wreath,
garland
and voice mail

this present moment
and this one,
and the next.
Tiny moments
left unattended
willing
to follow
anyone
Here, take it.
It is yours, this present.
There are plenty
overflowing the bowl of time
O this blizzard of moments
All for the taking.
Joy to this,
world of the present

When your turn comes
(for a breath or a season)
to be lost inside your own life,
When you remind yourself
(almost humming the truth of it)
Oh, how lost, how lost I am,
when that is how it is with you
when humming keeps your hands firmly held
in Lost — there are times (these times)
when having your hand firmly held
is deep comfort, no matter what is
holding you. What if, instead,
you told yourself:
This is adventure
or journey or
a game?
What if this is Hide and Seek?
And the trick to the game is
Stop hiding. Stop seeking.
Open your hands to the wind.

If Monet lived here
at the heart of November
in the heart of these hills
he would abandon his pastel palette
for dark orange maple scattered evergreen
red-topped sumac brown cattails white birch
colors risen up around us
this bowl filled with the end of colors
and if Monet
were like the artist of this day
he might be tempted to go too far,
to make this world ridiculously beautiful adding
rhinestones or diamonds
covering the whole view with glisten of first snow