Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

The mouse-colored lady cardinal is back,
feathers flecked with washed out red
like a woman who’s forgotten to dye
the gray from her hair. She keeps
pecking at the window above the kitchen sink

where we’ve all stood so many hours
washing dishes, looking out through rising steam
now here she is looking in
or through, at her own reflection
and the deep green reflection
of the hedge that is her real home if only
She would turn around and look
and there it goes again,
Life drops another into your water wrinkled fingers
the way it does, life’s little hobby,
whether we notice or not

Turn around and look
Stop hurrying through everyday
Turn around and look at
Your own true home

faithless and small,
we stumble towards the mountain
hauling our load of words and sticks
a fraying rope tied
to the sled handle

Go ahead, yell.
Maybe someone on the mountain
is listening maybe someone
will hear and shout back
offer encouragement
directions
or hot cocoa

How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life
from The Clothes Pin, by Jane Kenyon

When winter won’t stop
whispering in its dreariest voice
I prescribe a sturdy regimen
of poets, their words
stacked like firewood against
implacable cold each twig
bound for kindling crackles
light and comfort,
comfort and joy
The act itself warms and eases
you, gathering the poets
like pouring pills into your cup
whitman kenyon nye
collins cummings bly
rotella neruda
ferlinghetti
and oh, oliver and
oh willard with the moon
in her bicycle basket

We could mark it on calendars
as we add birthdays and dentist
appointments the middle of
January is for griping
at the icy dark
then remembering
to light the candles, lamps,
strings of leftover holiday lights
half-price so buy twice as many
until everything, every thing
is Lit Up and shining more brightly
because it shines through icy dark
June never glows like this

Response to Wordle prompt 233 from the Sunday Whirl.

Some days we go.
When we can’t keep step
we leave the fine wire mesh
the sieve of skeletons
Behind and take our dreams
somewhere else. Some days
words spill out of our mouths
signaling change. Those days
when you can’t keep
your head in the game? Those
days when your fondest wish
is outdoors, gazing at the moon?
That’s you, exiting the present
to practice.

Maeve knew a boy once whose name was Miles To Go. For a time, they were thick as thieves, a phrase that tickled them, Maeve and Miles being what they were.

Miles taught her many things, but the most useful by far was how to watch clouds banked on the horizon. A trick of the light, a shift of the eye, and clouds became islands out to sea, diminishing into the distance.

It took practice to see this way. But Maeve, who had shirked many a lesson in her time, excelled at island viewing. Some days, he said, if the fog was thick enough, islands became mountain ranges. Had she noticed? She hadn’t. Maeve wondered what else this boy might teach her, given enough time.

But one day he was gone. Miles To Go stole a no-name horse who beckoned and cajoled him over those mountains and far away. Maeve watched as he and the horse swam island to island until they were out of sight.

Maeve was like a polka no one danced to any longer, loud music striving to be gay in an empty, echoing room. She was always left behind, a package on a shelf, a layaway plan, in case her parents decided on her again. And she was done with all that.

 
So with a stolen library book about changelings, Maeve took her fate into her own grubby hands and having lost all faith in judges she went searching for fairies willing to take her in, to change her future.

The runes and rules read thus:
To summon fairies ( not that you should, but if you insist) you need a heart-shaped stone and a pair of broken spectacles. A red scarf an umbrella a green plastic straw a tossaway bag from McDonald’s and a potato
and a baby
and a bottle of beer
one oak leaf
a car
and something purple

Maeve began to gather, though she worried over that leaf–there were no oak trees to be found around here.

Written in response to a prompt site called The Sunday Whirl, from writer Brenda Warren. What a fun way to loosen up words.  Once a week, she posts a Wordle as a poetry prompt. Try it.  It’s fun. Here’s her prompt for this week, with my response below.

Maeve snared an angel once, by mistake. Impossible to say how long she kept it, how many lost hours or years of liminal light they sat through, angel and thief, watching each other. Waiting.

 
Eventually, Maeve let it go. But she remembers this—the slap of wings against the ground as it rose through the forest. The empty snare shimmering with gold dust. Her own gasp at the sudden cold of loss once the angel was gone. Her own hands coated with gold.

 
There is no space in Maeve’s world for a memory like this so she shut it off, as if turning down a dial till it clicks softly Off. She only lets herself remember in the long pause between awake and asleep, liminal calling to liminal. This will go on for a very long time, until at last they meet again.

I am trying to write a poem about
my childhood manger saved from
so much I long to say something
about the yearning it wakes, about
ancient tissue soft with years given to
protecting the dog with a busted foot,
wise man stamped 29 cents on his base,
Baby Jesus with his crackled paint,
Joseph’s broken nose

There’s something I wanted to say
about this longing for all the broken past
But in that trick words love to play
the word manger looks wrong
Googled, I land on a food blog
from the French countryside called
Manger, and though I’m sure these soft
focus gorgeously photographed people
do eat, they appear to mostly romp
through vineyards carrying bowls of
apples and wearing shiny Wellies.

I can’t picture Mary or Baby Jesus
in Wellies but in the way of the Internet
one longing is replaced by another
longing and I dream of dinner
in France as I pack away
the older battered longings
of a different manger

putting Christmas away
tree to the curb still
trailing tinsel—
down to the last star now