Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

No poem this morning just
words, jumbledandfallen
Undisciplined
tumbling down
around my feet
like jovial puppies.

Adorned
is the word
the tree uses
to talk about
itself

stretching the
connection between
Adore
and
Adorn

to describe
a life bigger
than merely
decorated (with its hint of
frippery)
while
Adorn sails on
beneath its
gleaming regal mantle.

Other winter sports
have their enthusiasts, players,
and superstitions. My sport believes
in spoons beneath pillows
pajamas turned inside out
tried and true methods
for predicting the outcome
in this early-morning game.
Amateurs can play
but it’s the semi-pro leagues
of elementary school students
who really shine.
Parents and teachers,
rooting for opposites sides,
wait for the final call.

Slow moving bands of snow
are crossing our region
on their annual tour. The closest
band travels in an old bus painted
white, of course.
The horn section sits in the back
bickering over where to stop
for dinner. The driver, who
says his job is driving snow,
ignores them all, intent on his path
ignores especially the lead singer
who keeps complaining, asking him to
Speed It Up, the whole band is moving too
slowly says the singer, telling the drummer
when no one else will listen but the drummer isn’t
listening either. He is staring out the window,
dreaming, watching the road whiten beneath them.

My shiny new words of the day–
an academic discipline
which studies old,
abandoned knowledge
once common as
alchemy and magic but
swept aside now,
episodes the world
would just as soon forget
like history’s hair in a bad photo
buried in the high school yearbook

The map you were given years ago
says Every day, every moment,
is another chance
to Get It Right,
to step onto this path
to move remembering how
to Breathe how to
Look Up at the faces of people and
Stars in their eyes reflecting
Stars in our eyes
reflecting this other light.

Spineless
is the scariest word
among the books.
Spineless
is the bogeyman
picture books and
easy readers use to
frighten themselves
into delicious shivers.
Spineless
is the fate awaiting
many an old hardcover
Badly bound, frayed,
disintegrating.
Remember,
the Bennett girls whisper
to the Bagginses,
Age crumples us all
but, Oh, the stories we’ve held.

Curious sleepy season
offers, amid the loud mechanical
carols and fluorescent shopping,
quieter gifts beneath the glare.
Here, light this candle a
reminder on fire Look
trees through lit windows
plastic reindeer on the lawn
a box of light to open strand by strand
in this, the only season that twinkles.

Winter in her soul
sounds so Shakespeare
High Drama the reflected light
of colliding fates exploding lives
the only light there is in the
thick cold dread
frozen in place after

But
it is winter in me
finally and it is not
as advertised it is
the opposite of Drama
opposite of dread
Winter is calm and so quiet
Quiet enough to hear the wind through
trees before it rattles all my windows
I am inside myself tending winter
which feels not Shakesperian
but like a farmer tending sleeping crops
tulip bulbs or a deep root vegetable
a carrot maybe a radish
dreaming slow and resting
waiting for the spring

You were right to pester
until we painted
the room opened those cans
closed the dark-cornered season
and set the mood to Glow