Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

morning ladies walk
alone and serious or
in laughing bundles

a date
and not the kind that grows on trees
But
like a date,
or is it a fig
familiar and
foreign, at once—
a flavor you haven’t tasted
for a long time
but remember fondly.
So one day,
Today
strolling through the grocery
strolling through the world
you think maybe
and try one

daddy-long-legs
dew-damp, folded in the ferns
unfurls into day

lean into summer
write it a haiku each day
to
slow
down,
see,
breathe

coffee on the porch
balancing summer before
morning yoga class
**********************
kitchen calender
bends this season at the fold
into two green halves

Before there was luggage
we only kept what we could carry
in our arms
jumbled together everything
visible to the world
Then we invented luggage
Suitcases purses bags of all kinds—
messenger duffel lunch garment
velcroed and zippered tightly
wrapped, manageable though heavy
Eventually, having already invented
the wheel, we glued them
to the bottom of our baggage
Now our burdens can glide behind us
like obedient versions of puppies
and keep pace as we try
to hurry away.

Prayer flags strung
on the white barn
walls such servants
will hold with patience
all the peculiar evidence
of our desires
picture paper paint prize
holding still while we measure
what fits with the couch
or comforts the cows

his flannel shirt
clothesline-dried
its whole long life
fades, softens by seasons,
sways in this summer’s
breeze this same
breeze the barn opens to
brisk through autumn
flows to blizzard
barn shrugs and smiles
settles into its
patch of well-loved earth

Contentment and loneliness
paint such different pictures with
the same through line of
Quiet

in the space below morning’s birds
a slow sound and I don’t know
if it’s the candle guttering
or the cat purring by the door or
the low song of the washing machine
drifting in from the kitchen

or may be
it’s my sweet old house
humming to itself

Only teachers and moms
have trouble with this,
said the waitress.
Everyone else
throws money on the table
until someone says,
Enough.

But in us some force
rises to battle chaos
to whittle the world
into percentages
until it turns out
Fair for everyone.