Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

world echoes colors
you chose, green grasshopper perched
on purple shamrock

Still talking, my dear one
steps onto the tracks
explaining in her calmest voice
how everything will
Be Okay.

We both pause, not sure what to say
now, not sure how to calm or comfort
each other with foolish piles of words
nothing but damned words
So we grow quiet
turning towards the rumble
coming closer
every day.

For the last few days, life has pushed away anything as ordinary and comforting as poetry, or even thinking of the first day of school. But it’s on the calendar, so it must be here. I can’t gather enough words around me to write a poem.  But here is the poem I wrote last year for the first day of school.  I was proud of it then, because it said so clearly what I wished for my students.  What I wish for them this year, too.

All the books you never read
are stacked against you
one tall precarious tilt casts
a long invisible shadow over you
Shadow you will not admit exists
However
like gravity and oxygen it is Real.

This is our year.
I didn’t know you when you were
turning away or turned away
or never brought near the
world’s foothills and mountains
of board books, picture books,
easy readers, chapter books.
But I know you now.
I am offering now I am
handing out climbing gear and in
this world both
tools and mountains
are made of Words
Somewhere up there are stories for you
every thing you need to scale
any height you choose.
Here’s a great book.
Start climbing.

count and concentrate
on season to write haiku
concentrate too hard
and
even the smallest hummingbird
will startle you out of
syllables,
darting away
with your careful numbers

one or both of you
ought to be laughing by now
which saves the whole poem

at the edge
of the sunflower field–
a bumper crop of
clicking cameras

Back home
apples tumbled to the ground
while I traveled loudly
through the world

Now evening and we are home
mom kids Sam the dog
full of dinner tired from chasing
so many sticks

Now the dog leaps up
at each leaf rattle thump
ready to protect us from
Dangerous Fruit

Now we are
quiet enough
to hear the apples fall

and there ought to be a word
for this feeling both lonesome and cozy
for how other apples fell
while we were far away and noisy
neither us nor apples thinking of each other
though there’s the outside chance
the dog was listening for them,
even then

My problem, since you asked,
Is only this—all the things
I didn’t do in
This summer

Which is
Just another way
To say
Things I didn’t do in
This life

I have not
Written enough books
Read enough books
Thrown enough parties
Lost enough pounds
Sorted enough closets
Painted enough pictures

I have not
Glided at dusk
On a still lake
In a kayak
Or better yet, as a swan.
That’s it—
I have not turned into a swan
Enough

Or if not a swan then
The birch tree
At the water’s edge
Who sees every sunset
And how the lake calms
More times than enough

Here, she said,
and held out the box of syllables
because good girls like us
bring hostess gifts
when we visit.
She emptied the whole box
onto my sunny kitchen table.

haiku tumble out,
start counting the tomatoes
fresh from the garden

She smiles, stirs them with a finger,
says, Go on, live a little.
They scatter, to see
what they can make of themselves
leaving dusty little footprints
fragile as moth wings
as they stop counting steps.
Instead, with a little hop, and a
goodbye wave, they begin
tracking new lines all over
the checkered tablecloth

Cloud-covered
to hide the meteors, the
dark filled with cricket song

After enough time
even songs disappear
and it’s too early or too late
for anything except
me keeping company
with the night
while it fills up
all the jars of tomorrow

one cardinal
flies a mad dash
across the rain-soaked sky
layers himself over
the damp green trees

his body brushes
bright shouts of red
which wakes up
the whole picture