Puff Of Smoke Poems

Be cautious of sadness.
It has grown too large when
birds avoid your yard, even
tempted with suet cakes.
If despair wears itself
paper thin, lures you to ignore
the complicated gifts
of age, illness, solitude
then even the birds sense it
and move across the road
where there is only
midwinter grass. So many birds
we lose count.

Static-filled morning:
Static in our hair, sweaters, socks
even our words
(especially our words)
give off sparks.
We walk through the hour
stepping carefully
shocking each other awake

Use every day to
teach yourself or
better, Wake Up
Ready to let
the day teach you.
Oh its lesson plans
are tattered from use
and look haphazard
held together as they are
with bits of twine and yellowed
cellophane tape
pages softened by repetition
This is an old,old lesson from a
teacher who remembers your
grandparents and their grandparents
but as a unit of instruction
a day is the perfect length
And if it is a day when the student
is sick or lazy or distracted
No matter. There is a new lesson
just over the horizon, almost here
Wake up ready to let this day be
The One to Teach you something

“Your soul is the king’s falcon,” sings Rumi
but here on the ground we are yelling at a cat
to get off the table, packing lunches,
untangling power cords, checking the forecast,
drowning out the soft classical guitar play list
fading the falcon into the background
on a groundswell of ordinary morning irritation.
Stop, breathe, remember who we are
each of us, as we both soar
and search for clean socks

Snow built a new landscape in the night.
Only natives recognize it now —
that wide white field?
It isn’t a field at all
but a frozen pond
favored by the geese.
How many similar secrets
does every village hold?
Every village (every heart)
waits for spring to thaw and show
what’s been hidden in the cold

Someone—a deer, a dog,
A small moose, a snow mermaid
Someone bigger than a bunny
In no hurry at all
Crossed the yard while we slept
Left a trail visible only from above
Masked by snow at ground level.
I study it from the upstairs windows
Like so much else noticed in quiet
This sounds as if it’s a metaphor
When it is just this:
The snowy truth

About every single thing in his poems,
she shook her head and said:
We don’t have those anymore.
trees, leaf mold, mountains
seashores, minutes, cows
weekends, candles, dictionaries
llamas, meadows, coffee mugs
coffee
All gone, now.

more time passes
I read another poem
(a tiny treatise on impermanence)
while the candles burn
the furnace chugs along
tea fills the mug steam rises
our whole house hums
everything committed to its
vital ordinary work
the walls and roof
hold steady the windows
windows who rattle a bit
humble and ecstatic in the throes
of framing this fierce wind

I like my notebooks
shrink-wrapped in clear plastic
and coated in cheap glitter.
It takes effort (time and teeth)
to catch and peel away
what binds those pages
Once free, the paper
sighs the tiniest sigh
breathes out a puff of loose glitter
so now your hands shine too

how would it be
to be one pine cone dreaming
at the top of one evergreen
on the side of one snow-covered hill
one of many among multitudes
all of us waking
below the bright white
winter sky