Puff Of Smoke Poems

When you’ve been walking

in circles, wrapped in old conversations

that can never keep you warm

and every moment is another moment

she’d rather be somewhere else.

When you’re weary because your heart

is tied to your child

so it is always traveling

or packing its bags.

When you can’t remember

how to reach her or how to get home–

Rest on the road.

Talk long into the night with the other travelers, who are

all searching for their wandering hearts.

Light a fire and sip something warm together.

Swap stories and laugh.

Though this is not the place you sought

you can learn to let it be, for now, close to

Enough.

Do you know that feeling?

The one when it’s a rainy afternoon

and you open a book you’ve never read before

with few expectations,

recalling all those misguided infatuations

And blatant seductions in the past–

by wily books dressed to draw you in—

Thick paper and quirky quotes

lovely art, reviews that make you hope

despite many, many disappointments.

Then, this time, you stumble over someone

ready to be in love with the world,

and discover musty trunks full of old diaries and tattered maps

and everywhere, on every page she writes of the outdoors—-

Misty rain, thick forest, a fog rising

from the fields–

and tucked beneath the mountains,

tiny stone cottages with thatched roofs,

Wild roses and mugs of strong tea.

You sigh and think—

Oh, this book will be delicious.

Thank you, you breathe, to the god of books

who, capricious and irresistible,

tumbles treasures into a reader’s hands

a few times in every life.

You know that feeling?

I found it today.  

A house drove by,

Going fast,

Scattering leaves

And school buses. 

We’re hiking the gorge, this poem written by stone,

down the path thick with leaves, and

stone steps cut into the steepest declines.

At the bottom, ice coats the shale ledge.

We watch our feet instead of the view,

too aware of how easily limbs break,

how quickly a slip could shatter something inside.

Ahead of us, two hikers call down to someone below.

When we reach them on the bridge, we lean over to see—

Three teenagers on the side trail

that leads straight down, behind the waterfall.

The hikers above, middle aged, our age,

are calling warnings about mud and ice

are calling Careful, Careful.

The teenagers wave and laugh

across the steep distance between us.

The lost continent of Atlantis

was discovered today,

shoved under your bed, resting on a pile of dirty socks

and PopTart wrappers, next to your missing retainer.

No one who has ever seen your room

was surprised when I described the green hills,

the ships in the harbor,

the castles and the marble statues rising up.

If you ever find this note—

(unlikely, since I tucked it beneath your pillow–)

you will sigh and roll your eyes

and ask, Can’t you just tell me

to clean my room, like a normal mother?

Picture the moon practicing

while you slept,

showing early attempts to the cat

who remained unimpressed.

Cat, ever practical, said

The moon’s best efforts

at shadow puppets

were the bunny or the bird.

If you’re going to all that trouble

wrangling light and shadow

it might as well be tasty.

Moon smiled, having learned long ago

to ignore cats.

In the night, moon

painted a heart in the middle of the floor,

a trick of the light

you’ve never seen before.

Buy crusty French bread

on your way home from the lawyer.

Play music while you slice the baguette

into fewer slices than years you were married.

Chop up tomatoes, olives, garlic,

oregano, memories and red peppers

in any combination you choose.

The mixture will be perfect, which proves

you can make good decisions.

Pour strong olive oil

over food that

behaves so rationally

you would kiss it

if it wasn’t dinner.

Stir.

Heap spoonfuls onto the bread

like a person who has never been stingy with love.

My neighbor is at it again,

his leaf blower buzzing

as he vacuums nature.

I want to take the leaf blower out of his hands,

tell him with his crew cut

and neatly pressed jeans

To let the leaves be indolent teens who nap all day

and race around on windy nights

wild to escape their fate,

instead of obedient recruits waiting at the curb

huddled with their kind.

I want to remind him that

in the morning we’ll be even again:

Leaves covering both our yards

His will lose their way, run with the wrong crowd,

get dizzy, fall down and sleep wherever they land.