Puff Of Smoke Poems

Desperate
is the word
for how he feels.
He can still
find the word.
What he can’t find
is the Very Important List
he wrote, though he’s looked
Everywhere.
Maybe you saw it, he asks.
Maybe you took it?
Desperate, he says.
Desperate to not see
what is lost, how loss
keeps flowing
like a river
sweeping through

which is not to say
our street is all winter quiet
and solemn contemplation

Next door to Evelyn’s house
lives a family with busy kids
and a big friendly dog
They are a family at the stage called
Do It All.
There are sports watched and played
careers and committees, a great deal of hunting
sledding kayaking swimming and taking doors
on and off and back on a jeep
to accommodate more sports equipment

In their front yard, a blowup Santa
with an attached blowup dog
in honor of the real,
much bigger and more biddable dog.
Blowup Santa and his dog are not
Biddable.
The two of them spent most of December
deflated and flapping in the wind but
Today they are posed
in their second favorite position:
blowup dog with his head
buried in blowup Santa’s crotch.
Santa’s expression never changes
Which demonstrates either
You can get used to anything
Or
You’d better get used to this
if you’re going to have a dog
Or
Every single day offers up
Comic Relief if you only
teach yourself where to look
while you drink your coffee.

For thirty years,
my friend Evelyn
had the habit of
leaving the lamp post lit
in her front yard
and her garage door
open
all evening
as if to say,
I might drive out
on an errand or adventure
at any moment.
As if to say,
as a friendly reminder,
Here I am.

In Evelyn’s house
after her funeral
her grown children
left one lamp lit
and drove away

Mornings before dawn,
I see it from my kitchen window
as I stir my coffee

Today I want to write a poem
about wisdom
about not overworking
about remembering balance
and breath
about not pushing one more
task into every overflowing day

I got up extra early
to write this poem
about being gentle with
my self, giving over room
to wander through the hours
with empty hands and no list.

I love that poem I was going
to write this morning, while
sipping that second cup of coffee
But that’s not the poem I wrote.
Maybe later. I don’t have time
to write right now

is it lost by lack of practice
skill slipping away, inattention
till you can no longer–what?
ride a bike,
flip a pancake?

No. now that I’ve had quiet hours–
so many quiet hours–to think it over,
It is closest to skipping flat stones
across still water–you find the right stone–
and let it go
just so–
you don’t remember that you know
how to do this
but your body remembers and
there goes that stone
again and again and again
till it quiets and sinks beneath the surface
just so, you used to fall asleep

all night, half melted
icicles crash
falling
from the roofline

in the morning,
one small gray feather, stuck,
frozen to the gray sidewalk
still moves in imitation
of what it was
meant for–flutters
in the wind

Forty inches of snow
kept everyone in Binghamton
home. Most of them took pictures

White in the air, on the ground, on
cars and porches, road signs, rooflines.
You had to be there.
Snowstorms are
not photogenic.
But I love how we try anyway,
try to show each other
things so huge they’re hard to picture.
forty inches of snow, blue whales,
distances between stars–
We line up examples for scale.
What would we do without
elephants?

Dear Sir,
I saved your voicemail
so I can savor later
the way you say
Snow
Day

You forget.
Today it’s a name–
the man from Manhattan
who traded the city
for quiet hills and
a big farmhouse,
another thing that
used to be
yours.
You send a card anyway.
Life’s a gamble, you say.

when we finally arrive,
every last one of us
bone-weary, at best
the first decision is
where to work. What part of
home do you give over?
What jigsaw puzzle piece of
your life becomes your work?

This time around, wiser if not smarter,
I let kindness choose. This time, not the
practical space of enormous table
in the mid-day cold of the poorly-insulated kitchen

This time I choose the thrift store table
in the living room, table I hauled home
and on a summer day
painted the table-top sweet blue
and the mismatched base jaunty yellow
now I position it by the windows and begin