Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

You might think the quiet is
the first thing you’ll notice.
Wrong.
Colors jump out and grab at
your ankles, your rumpled sweatshirt,
your yet to be combed hair.
Damp and freshly rinsed, the pink peony
green maple tree deeper than
the fresh green of your untrimmed grass
and look there, the red enamel spout
on the watering can in the hands of
your neighbor in her lavender silk pajamas.
And last of all, the surprise of the dark purple
blueberry, the one you dropped in your coffee
long ago, before your morning walk, and forgot
busy with colors.
Go ahead, drink it in.

another gift
of aging:
That abandoned basketball
half hidden in the weeds
behind the lilacs?
Just wait.
When you’re old enough,
it transforms (for a moment,
from the upstairs window,
in early gray light)
It becomes a fresh bloom
Of rare orange lilacs.

Early May, early morning
wet snow on adventure road
She waves, taps the horn once
and drives away
car roof covered with damp pink petals.
The softest guardians keep her company
till they dry in the sun and
take to the road themselves
Picture her then—
petals streaming behind her
flower girl for her own future

rolled up snow fences
along the Eastern edge of all the fields
they wait, curled and quiet
brown sticks sleeping (furled instead of un-)
like creatures about to bloom
Winter’s last crop

“Writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” Michael Cunningham

Then write in the white rapids and dangling from parasails,
bungee cords, high-dive boards, a crocodile’s jaws.
Write in the middle of the jungle even as night
falls through small rustles awake in the underbrush
and a not too distant tiger roars (if tigers do,
before they pounce, about which I’m none too sure
but who will argue it in those dire, possibly final moments?)
If instead, a nightmare
wakes you in the deep dark
turn on your light and write.
If you find you can’t write, at least read something
Written by someone else, someone who felt
optimism like a chant, a spell on paper,
an invocation to bring it back
once upon a time and happily,
ever after…

When that seed of lack plants itself (again)
deep in your heart or your brain or even one day
when it brushes your skin,
buries itself in your tangled hair
which is every day, which is many times every day
because these seeds are more numerous than snowflakes
or dandelion fluff—floating and sturdy
but not indestructible
When deep in the night they whisper
All is lost don’t cover your ears
or try to sleep or even
drown them out with a litany of
all you ought to be grateful for.
Pull them close, those tiny desperate seeds
Pat their griping heads, hold their grasping hands,
Murmur There, there… mindless comforting sounds.
Tell them everything will be okay
Tell them everything is contained,
held and then released to leave
dreaming of the sun

Come back slowly
to the house
of your self
dust the tables, open windows
to catch the sweet breeze
of possibilities
all the slid away
during that long winter

I am waiting
for a mad poet
for a Ferlinghetti
like a Lamborghini
fast and wild-haired
painted Red
to sweep through this world
and shake us all
back to wake

Morning coffee
dark enough
to wake the day

The first day of spring.
Too distracted to look
for robins in the yard
but time enough
to store away small facts:
For example,
Ibsen, as a young boy
living poor in the country
performed magic tricks
to distract himself from
Real Life. Some tricks
never grow old.