Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

Every year there’s a poem
(a love poem) for
the redbud tree in our front yard

When you blossom, bees converge
humming through the air
Is that the poem?

Or is it distraction, how I missed the day
you opened into bright pure pink?

Or how I noticed (finally)
you at the door, framed above
whoever knocked, you as a
huge improbable hat?

Or is it how strangers gasp
during your bright brief reign
as queen of all trees?

Or is it that you do this every spring
whether I write you a poem or not?

Today’s inspiration from The Writer’s Almanac

How can you not be?
Today, for example, Jane
Kenyon, who wrote about
prodigals returned
and Margaret Wise Brown who
looked around a great green room
and saw a telephone and a red balloon
and it’s World Turtle Day
when we are all encouraged
to wear green and honor
a creature whose cells don’t age
as ours do. So Jane and Margaret
(and so many others of our kind)
go on ahead and leave us here
for a short while. Barely long enough
to notice all there is to be amazed by

Written in response to The Sunday Whirl.  This time, came out story-shaped.
Maeve hung cloth fish in bright patterns on that screen door, the one separating the two worlds. Who wanted to look into the abyss all day? Not Maeve. No one entered through the door all spring. This was a relief. Maeve began to relax, slept better in the long afternoons before her nightly prowl. One morning, halfway through July, she came home tired, found Jenny in the kitchen, humming and baking cinnamon bread, no answer at all to where she’d been gone for so long. They ate the bread with honey and mugs of Earl Grey that burned the tongue because they couldn’t wait. Maeve and Jenny talked through the whole day. Neither mentioned the missing fish, bartered away for flour and tea. No talk of why the white flowers hung there now, though Maeve worried over who might be summoned by the mingled scents of tea and toast, white lilacs, white gardenias.

The medium is the message
                                            —Marshall McLuhan

I:
Once upon a time, I’d turn it off
Too many horror movies convinced me:
static might contain
messages I’d rather not hear

II:
driving in these hills
outside signals of all kinds
are weakened and wander
which means our prejudices and
fashion sense remains static and
pieces of radio stories from NPR
drift into small snatched bits of songs
So I hum and wonder
Make up my own endings
to all those stories, my own lyrics
to all those songs
Roll down the windows
Discover the weather for myself

whoever created
all this
whatever else we
do not know
or
cannot fathom
or
definitely doubt
we do know
Definitively
something about
the deep duality
woven into the fabric
of this world because
Clearly
someone could not decide
between
blue and green

Spring
this year so
slowly she
arrives
as if she’s lost
her calendar
or her map
as if she’s lost
the memory of
where we live
Here. We live here.
Here is where you
are meant to bloom
again

Read/hear more about it at National Public Radio

We make things every day.
Just today, somebody
made a coconut cake,
a bottle of red nail polish,
a compact car the color
of that polish,
Siren Red. Somebody made
a fire engine, a siren,
somebody made the fire.
Somebody else made
a spectacle of herself
and enjoyed it.

There is a prize.
The Universe awards it daily
for the Best Thing Made. Today,
though you all did a lovely job
the award goes to a little boy in Italy
who invented a word meaning
“full of petals”
Perfect timing, I think, as I hurry into
this created world, this created day
Feeling pretty petaloso myself

this world, where terrible things have happened,
but still we are surprised
by our capacity to be
Surprised Again—

hummingbirds
forgotten tulips planted in long ago autumn
two cracked open robin’s eggs, one empty
our town, from the crest of the hill —
tucked into the valley
           glistening like a hobbit’s village
mice and spiders, almost always
a paper letter in our blue metal mailbox
dandelions, all at once
And you—What surprises you?

Written in response to prompt at The Sunday Whirl

Every change requires a new map
said my little old auntie
when she took up chanting
instead of talking so every
conversation became a song
a memory of high Mass except
instead of priests wielding incense
a gray-haired lady in a flowered dress
asks if you’d like a bit more peach pie.
After lunch, you take a walk
Gregorians on the radio
got her started, she explains in chant
Block after block she chants
the whole town takes up the habit
the grocer, the baker, the candlestick maker
every ordinary exchange a melodious moment
Sometimes my auntie dances, too
especially at intersections
so it’s only a matter of time
till that starts a whole new craze
Let’s get this showwwww
on the roaddddddd, she chants to the stoplight
till it too falls into a trance and does her bidding

each day possesses
its own, fashioned from creatures
crossing this country road:
sparrow, chipmunk, deer
barn cat, collie, cow
once, a black bear
(even chickens cross this road)
Today, a red fox
in no hurry at all
looked back at me
from the green field on the other side
for one moment
in these purpose full lives,
our eyes met
exchanging some thing
neither of us could
put into words