Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

For your garage light
in morning darkness
illuminated world of
order and vinyl siding
clipped lawn, basketball
hoop with its net intact
a window out my window
a different world, arranged
just so, as if your yard is explaining
its world view again, patiently,
to all the more disheveled neighbors—
Look, it’s not so hard
Begin anywhere.

Always in autumn, reaching
or flying into pieces
scented cinnamon.

The leaves were content
as a carpet at the curb
till I stir them up, memories
quick and caught and airborne

There I am, once,
watching at the kitchen window, apple
muffins in the oven, apple
children of my eye, and is it them,
or me as a child, decades ago
hurrying home in golden light
leaves and futures caught in my hair
a Betsy Ray book waiting for me
to read of adventure long ago or me
Here, now, buying pens and dreaming a
story about a long journey, a girl
packing a leather satchel, setting out on foot
to slay dragons and seek fortune and become
a tale to tell.

Whatever they were, daydream or figment or nightmare, there were at least two of them and they followed her everywhere. One was a cloud drifting at her right shoulder. She could feel it, the gray draft it made in the air. Sometimes she poked at its edges, no further. The depths of it were fearsome, inevitable and endless. But the other one? Oh, that was a rare and lovely thing. Only visible when she turned her head and looked for it. Green on green, also inevitable, also endless, but this one a happy shadow, growing itself into a forest, tree by tree by leaf.

Sometimes they come back,
the ones who kept walking
out of high school
till they arrived at the doors
to a different life.

Sometimes, after a few months,
Curiosity or homesickness
brings them to us again
the lockers, the tiled hallways
already smaller than they remember.

Wow. Lucky that Puff Of Smoke isn’t a person. Distracted by real life, I forgot that yesterday was our 2nd anniversary. I knew it was around here somewhere, but the end of the month arrived before I noticed. WordPress had to remind me.

Some days I wonder how long I’ll keep at this daily(ish) poem practice. I worry about becoming repetitive, or trite, or falling into the trap of continuing because I don’t like to quit commitments. All I can say for certain is today I’ve got something to say. And that I keep at it because I keep learning new lessons. Or the same lessons over and over.

What am I learning here? Big lessons about commitment and creativity and community. And the capacity for surprise.

I’m quietly amazed that I’ve stuck with this for two years.

The other surprise is community. I mostly think of this practice as talking to myself. But this handful of readers who’ve stumbled in and stayed is a constant joy—I love these odd little relationships with people I’ll likely never meet, in different corners of the world, reading and responding to these poems.

Most of all, I’m taking—and teaching myself—a class in creativity.

That sounds Pretentious. But that’s the exact opposite of what I mean by creativity. These lessons, they are not about fame, not about fortune, not about Creativity in Capital Letters. What I’m learning is about living an everyday, ordinary, happy creative life. The habit of showing up, writing a poem each day, keeps showing me the nature of being creative—better than any book or class ever could. I am learning the ebb and flow of it, the constant returning. I love how, even at low tide, I find something interesting when I walk the morning beach—a pearled shell or a hidden pocket of words in a tide pool. A treasure I didn’t know existed until I went looking. A treasure I can’t name until I write it down, again.

Cozy is kept in a cabinet
tidied away each spring,
forgotten. For months it waits
all patience and autumn,
red scarves,
shelves of candles
and apple muffins, spiced
cocoa, stacks of books
an unlocked heart which
tends its own fire.
Here on the table,
one leaf from the maple tree
bright orange reminder
to open this season’s door.

Eat berries one by one
savoring mid-summer
when every field shouts
Bounty.
Tuck that taste away
somewhere safe
for later when you need it.
And you will.
This world behaves as if
it always was and
always will be
Green a world
that never heard of snow
But you know better.

Tiny ones, fifty cents.
Pie pumpkins, one dollar each.
Big ones, grown to be carved,
priced per pound.
The checkout girl explains—
You can tell which are for pies
Those are perfectly round and shaded
A deeper orange. She smiles,
hands me my change, says
It’s my specialty. I’m kind of
an expert on pumpkins.

Sometimes I lose the thread
into the labyrinth where words live
guarded by their mysterious
possibly kindly monster.
Murderer or marvel?
I don’t know because I dropped
the damned thread.
Leaves and skin shiver.
I hold my breath, blindly
reach in the dark, hoping
to touch its frayed edge
hoping I remember
not to grab too tightly
and hear it snap when
I find it again.

No palm trees.
For that matter, no desert
but the spinning world.
We’ve loved vast oceans yet
still crave this particular water
at the edge of this particular lake.
Now and then luck and balance
deliver us to the door, which someone
opens from the inside. We help each other
carry in our baggage, the mismatched and old
scattered among the new.
We take time to admire the lake in all its seasons
as we settle in, ready to fill our cups
with what we need for the next
leg of the journey. Eventually,
we pack our camels
and wave goodbye, refreshed.