Puff Of Smoke Poems

All these poems
don’t come from a teaspoon
sipped from a lake.
It’s closer to a net
a patched and ragged
net hauled up from the ocean–
Here’s the fact that
you’re going to die
and so am I,
but it’s tangled up
with my student’s earnest
face as he described how
to catch a mole with bare hands
and where in the wild
to set it free
And that’s mixed with
grocery lists, clean socks,
stray strand of tinsel,
whether or not
to buy a truck,
fresh eggs, phone bills,
and green mysteries
sprouting in our garden
and that bird, the one
singing right this second
Outside, in the dark

Here
there’s time enough to
pay bills or write poems, not both
this season of lack

There
at your house, socks, book,
under a blanket, hiding
till life gets better

Outside, spring is here
We compare vaccine schedules
Plot out our escape

Dear Friend,
who sounded so sad
on the phone
This isolation goes
on and on
and on
No new ships
stir the horizon.
It’s easy to forget
the one habit
this world
will never break–
things change.
Soon we’ll see a splash of color
coming closer
Someone’s on the deck
carrying champagne.
Listen just yesterday
in my garden
under the dead leaves
one tiny purple flower

Good mothers should get to decide
which memories their children hold onto
as if sorting through an enormous file cabinet
discarding that unfortunate dinner hour
keeping that rainy afternoon with cookies

Wait! That’s horrifying, you say
all you children of mothers
Who wants her poking around your mind?

Well, calm down. Only good mothers
get this option and who gets to decide
if they are good or not? Right. That’s us, sorted.

So then—easy fix. If none of us say
our mother was a good mother
then we’ve locked them out.

Oh. wait. There she is already
and always was–since before
you were born and there she’ll be–
rattling around at odd, inconvenient
moments as if our minds were mansions
and she can walk through all the rooms
examining the furnishings–picking things up
and setting them down again
forever

another string around a finger,
reminder to Look. Count the birds
on my morning drive
some days, six
some days, sixty
or more
some days, the birds conspire
to help, fly close and fast
past my windshield
Yesterday, sixty-four
Mostly dark but startle of
one red-winged blackbird
one jay flashing by
blue-blue-blue

I’ve decided.
I can predict the future.
I bought my friend
a funny notebook. On the cover
a lady in a pillbox hat, a label
that read “Unexpected Turbulence”
Two weeks later? Her troubled
twenty-something daughter moved home

You might be thinking
trouble in their twenties is not
Particularly
Unexpected.
True.
I predict it could happen
to you or to someone you know
and soon.
See?
Right again.

there are doors we are

there are doors we are
meant to leave open
and there are doors we are
supposed to close.

Deciding which one
you are
right this minute
standing on the threshold of?
Work of a lifetime.

haiku hold the world
in seventeen syllables
tiny nest of words

pattern of our days
my neighbor revs his engine
drives off in the dark

birds start to gossip
in bare trees, in the still dark
possible robins

though what do I know
about bird calls? It could be
anyone at all

what I can tell you
is this world wants to be seen
be here to see it

In the memory care doctor’s office
the sun shines in hot and bright
We call it the Florida room,
says the nurse who asks my father
when and where he is
Later, the doctor closes part way
the window shades
also called blinds
words for those things that soften the light
as the aging doctor, tired and patient
tells his ever older patient
again and again
the same bad news

three in the morning
world gets its heavy work done
but it’s noisy work

the sound that woke me?
a surprise of geese, night flight
carrying springtime

Right now, I’m taking an online writing class with amazing Natalie Goldberg, and rereading in little sips both her Writing Down the Bones and Clark Strand’s Seeds from a Birch Tree. I bought the Strand book from a used book store for $5 long ago, read it, loved it, tucked it onto a shelf. This early morning, I just reread: “Haiku…its purpose is not to convey information, but the feeling of a particular place and time.” (p.90)

today I’m the pen
that hiccups over a dry spot
shaken, scratched hard against the paper
And ink begins to flow again
deep and rich and effortless
but never smooth–random
occasional ink blots
add mess and joy

“We must allow a little space within which to compose a poem…no need to be frantic or hurried. There is always plenty of time.” (Strand, p.94)

one more wonderful
book fact–
words stay on paper
waiting for us

a year, ten, twenty-four–
no matter.
Here, open it
It’s for you–