Puff Of Smoke Poems

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.

sun and morning dew built it—
brief and vast, this field
fallow but filled with diamonds

we have been
a chattering of happy squirrels
of dart and gather of
tucking scribbled words into
every pouch and corner storing up
for later
for sometime
words for where we live
numbers to reach us
Today, two cars—
one then another
became Traffic in my head and I knew.
Time. Time’s here.
to breathe quiet air, leave the
doors unlocked, unlatched
but time to sit alone, and crack open
black walnut, acorn, stone and notebook
Full of words I was sure we needed

i write early while robins browse the yard
all of us low to the ground
attentive
to vibrations
beneath our feet

Stuck behind a rattly old tractor
and too polite
to
honk
my
horn
I honk it
in my head
and hold on
tight
to
an
Irritated
Breath.
The tractor
turns in
at the cemetery
to mow between the rows of gravestones.
Oh, I breathe—I see it now
What I was following wasn’t a tractor,
or it wasn’t only a tractor, it was a tractor gently
steadily hauling its other self which turned out to be a poem

I might have made
the start of a poem
early yesterday
scribbling as I drove—
I know that should
Already be Edited to:
Scribbling at a Stop Light—
but anyone who knows me
knows there aren’t any—
stop lights, that is—
on my commute.
So
I scribbled as I drove.
I don’t remember
what I wrote but
I’ll bet it involved the view—
winding my way
through hills hugged close
by low, misty clouds
till the sun came up
and dried the sky, till those
clouds wisped away
and I arrived
to become
Practical
and Achieve things all day

outside, again.
how quickly I forgot
how smoothly winter erased it
how the air is soft and damp green
sprinkled all over with
pink geranium petals
and the conversations of birds

men with Nerf guns
chase through the yard
yelling and giggling—

small boys returned
for an afternoon or
till they run out of breath

instead of bread crumbs
tiny poems
mark the path home