Puff Of Smoke Poems

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”   Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, quoted on The Writers Almanac, 1 Oct. 2019

So no matter our mood, how can we claim
to live in a world without magic or mystery?
We walk around for years, we hear and see and
wander with our minds.
Early or late, we each of us bump into them
in libraries or schools, laundromats or the
bookshelves of old boyfriends–
These are people.
They are fashioned from
26 shapes, cousins and courtesans,
shop keepers, a shepherd we recognize
shuffled again and again
into new people with surprising worries,
unfamiliar clothes and wars and weddings,
errands to run and meals to eat while
outside it begins to rain hard
here in this, the happening world

morning ladies walk
laugh and talk in a gaggle,
sweep across our town

overhead, the geese
call and gossip through the sky
echoes snag in trees

all of them, above and below
full of grace, ideas and noise
an urge to hurry forward
with so much to say
in haste
to each other

I wake even earlier
It’s still dark outside–
still
and dark.
I share this space with crickets,
murmur of early walkers,
truckers shifting gears on the highway,
commuters humming or grumbling
later, with the snow plows and the snow

We all, by love or necessity
share this early quiet, this soft dark hour
deep breath of our mostly sleeping world
before noisy daylight
hurries us forward

I:
This battered box of memory
is where I keep them—
my childhood, and yours.
Instead of packing tape
I reinforce the corners with
Exercise, Healthy Living.
To save the box.

II:
Across the street,
there’s his box
disintegrating from
age, misuse, and disregard—
The cardboard softens into
material pliable as cloth,
loses its shape, leaves it—
abandons the work of holding

on this morning’s walk—
two of them, dashing through treetops
Chaser and Chased and
in his small gray mouth
the Chaser carried a stick …
Join me to contemplate,
speculate,
wonder along

to be happy in the rain

and look,
weather delivered
a deluge
left puddles big enough
for ducks to wade in
and you, laughing in white
with mud
on your
mint green heels,
you two, Paris-bound
storm-drenched and shining
and
happy in the rain

She’s walking the skittish dog.
I ask about her husband.

The surgeon says they got it all.
We hope so. He’s tired right now.

We both look down at the sidewalk,
stand quiet for a minute.

But today’s the dog’s birthday, she says.
So I’m taking her out for ice cream.
To celebrate. We’ll bring him some too,
in case he can eat a little.