Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

While the world builds poems
of beauty without words
Humans build other things.
Israel, Palestine
Your storied histories
Stop here.
You will always be famous
to me, now, Not for wars
between nations,
Not for fierce love of home,
Not for the bravest of you
pushing through deep sand
with olive branches
but for this—
for raising those
Who murder teenage boys.
If I could ask you anything
I would ask, How
can your countries not
collapse in grief beneath this?
And you (perhaps) would answer
with a litany of the long, dark sins
of my country, which are many.
And while we shout our true and
Righteous accusations,
somewhere on this earth,
this earth that would build beauty,
mothers weep at children’s graves.

blue-shirted walker
gray dog, yellow leash
above these flash
cardinal, maple
one flying in front of the other
another sample, art or
is it craft
or something altogether
different
World’s best habit
let it never grow tired
of building these pictures
from one thing and another
let me never grow tired
of noticing.

Measure heat by
how grateful we
become in its absence
early morning grass
cool and damp
beneath us
green decorated
with clover,
flecked with the
iridescent webs
of optimistic spiders.

Summer keeps writing
passionate notes
wherever you turn what else
could be meant by
pink geranium petals
floating to land on your leg
while you read on the front porch?
Even now, summer can’t stop—
She signals as you write—
splash of goldfish in the pond,
note stuck to the damp sparkle
of lemonade pitcher
Read it quick
before the green ink
dampens and evaporates.

Schooled to be docile
all the assembled information
allowed itself to be tied up into
neat little packets bound with
twine, double-knotted.
In late June, all that data—
reports and scores, accumulated
evidence of the year
untied itself
gathered, ungathered
scattered across the tile floors
or pressed against the windows
till it found one Open
and then the flow of information
flew.

When you Know
without any recipe
exactly what you need
cook golden broth
chopped greens
bright srirachi
limes
A little gift
from you to you
in this now world
of necessary rain
work that is all tallies
grades, target scores,
children pinned to paper.
Intuition soup
breathes wisdom
reminds you to laugh
talk and stretch, create and sleep
and stir this perfect intuition soup
for dinner.

When the fog lifts
you see again
how the trees glisten
as if filled with light
Light, thick and sweet,
pours itself all over this world
World grows clearer
and more delicious
with every passing
moment
Once you can see,
you can hear it
This world that has been
calling your name
over and over
Now,
beckons again.

They say you should be
Open to New Ideas,
he said (begrudgingly).
And so I am
open to the
idea of being Open
to New Ideas while not
exactly, not precisely,
not definitively,
actually, open
just yet.
However,
thus far, I can say
definitely,
absolutely,
unequivocally,
as far as
the idea
of being
open,
I am.

And not just them—
Teachers and Jugglers
will tell you the same.
There must be a balance
between all things
Apple, orange, thin air
the chair and the podium
the pen and the hand
talking, not talking
listening and being heard
the desk and the forest
clamor of midday, quiet of night
vast brown ocean, deep blue sea.

beer cans, bottle caps, paper cups
our discarded attempts at
drinking in the whole world
Here and there, a nail from
where we tried to fasten
everything together
into a shape that would hold.
And almost always among
all these and the dandelion blooms
a pencil stub
dropped there for you
to pick up and write