Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

early November
tentative snow falls
in small steps, straight lines
like someone long away
takes up music once again
playing piano scales
recalling how it’s done
practice, practice

Far from fashion
these poems I stumble into
like acorns, or hidden ferns,
or mysterious misshapen treasures
deep in the pinesoft forest,
beautiful lumpy too large or top-heavy
glazed an odd shade off-tune
or stuffed with too many vowels
beloved doddering mongrel poems
not sleek images for a screen not shiny
not products for a shelf not
curated collected arranged not
Anthropologie or Instagram worthy
Better
these bundles of words twig-sharp edges
of punctuation carried on my back
packed by my own hands tied on like a
warm coat keeping company for the long journey
reminding me to clap for this my tiny superpower
to write down what flows past

the yellow-leafed maple
in the yard who kept her color
and her clothes longer than the others
She dreamed up a new color
yellow glow yellow hum yellow only
stirred together for today
shining deep against a flurry of bark
dark limbs gray sky
and now the snow
she will never look more lovely
than in this moment
and she shivers with the joy of it,
Knowing and Spectacular

deflated balloons
Frankenstein and the vampire
droop on the porch railing
Air that only yesterday
filled them with menace
filled them with purpose
now barely lifts their fabric arms
into a shrug at the vagaries of existence
or into a small wave at their fellow revelers
passing by, candy-dazed

When old sorrow
or your portion
of work in this world
feels heaviest, when you grow sleepy
from doing the right thing
so many times in a row
Remember—these weights
are also what anchor you
to this planet. Let tiredness wash over you
through the open car windows.
If you do not try to distract yourself
or cheer yourself, if you let it all be
exactly what it is this mixed blessing world
where you drive slowly into or out of the storm
stopping to buy bread and tea and chicken for dinner
planning the next task in your head,
if you do not run away from this feeling
you may see and be lifted, as you cross
to the grocery store how the afternoon light falls on the distant hills
how it folds, thick and slow, caught on the silk and
scratch of every stalk in the cornfield
at the edge of this parking lot

“ Most of our lives we’ve been encouraged to be elsewhere, in plans and strategies.” Stephen Levine, from A Gradual Awakening

Most of our lives
we’ve been encouraged to be
Elsewhere.
This is why we love
maps, recipes, guidebooks,
instructions of all kinds:
Turn left at the sunflower field,
Add sour cream and bake,
Take two at bedtime with water.

Put down the paper, the spatula, the cup.
Put away all the scribbled directions.
Let go of the pen.
With empty hands
Notice
where we are. Not elsewhere at all

at the kitchen window, early
rinsing a coffee cup
before the long litany of this day begins
Layered kitchen noises running water radio news.
The neighbors, their houses still in darkness.
something inside
dips into the deep well of
Tenderness — the well which always waits—
Quiet, in love with this street
this small still sleeping world

“Moment to moment, the mind is building some image of who it thinks it is.” Stephen Levine, in A Gradual Awakening.

Today, for example,
You could be anyone arriving
To shrug on the costume.
Is it the you who smells like lilacs,
Dresses only in green and eats acorns
Wrapped in spicy basil leaves?
Or the mama with a cookie jar?
Or you? In its endless inventiveness,
Some days it is the bossy you, the petty,
The forgetful, the needlessly cruel. And while
You may hope for another, today it looks to be
The adolescent with that unfortunate superiority,
The you who has perfected the eye-roll. Oh,
Come closer, you. Despite your disdain,
I have made us mugs of tea to warm our hands.

Author Alice Sebold, as quoted in today’s Writer’s Almanac, (she) “gets up every day at 4 a.m. to write because, she says, “If you start in the dark, the judges are all asleep.””

More a fond note to my caretakers
rather than a business memo, I write—
Oh my darlings, my judges,
who have given me so much
(who else would stop the various
disasters of fashion and faux pas
you steered me away from?)
What I need of you now is a certain
Drowsiness.
We are all getting older, including you,
Including me. We all need our rest and our work.
Let us understand each other.
When time appears with a poem curled
in its palm, a small span a snippet
a smidgen of time holding a handful
of the right words (words here and quickly gone again
a poem or a dream) could you, my sweet ones, my protectors,
my worried helpers, my kind curmudgeons, please
Please nod off? Gently, drift into your leather armchairs
and doze whenever they knock.

Flower pots must be biodegradable
No dogs allowed
Flags only on national holidays
Don’t disturb the spiderwebs, as they are good luck
Fix your family’s cracked headstones. Otherwise,
there is a fine, or a fire where you didn’t want one
If you stumble over loose stones, hurry home. Someone is calling for you.
If you drop your house key…Well, don’t drop your house key there.
That would be best.
Leaves blown across your path? Your grandparents are
thinking of you and smiling, while turning in their graves.