Puff Of Smoke Poems

turn off the radio, quick
before the weather man says things
you will regret hearing

sick of snow that hasn’t even
fallen yet.

In that school, it is administration’s habit
to hire poets to proctor all
examinations in mathematics.
Tired desks and fidgety chairs
line up in straggled rows
across the gymnasium.
The poets bring flowers
or the idea of flowers
nasturtiums or chrysanthemums
And the flowers or the poets or
the chairs themselves Something
fills the huge space with the scent
of nectarines and sunlight
which can seldom drown out
but certainly dulls
the itchy snick
of all those ticking clocks.

Cold for so long
becomes habit.
Whisper this,
lips close to the ground,
to every frozen fallow field.
Say, you’ve been quiet
long enough.
Say, time to stretch a million
million green fingers to the light.

Spring melt and freeze
builds a sugar shell
over the world
fragile and as easily
broken as the eggshell
the world is imitating
Or is it that eggshells
are tiny replicas built
to be shaped like a world?
Chicken egg world
whichever came first
it is here and cracking
open now, ice dazzled
by unfamiliar sunshine
breaks beneath each footstep
ready to reveal the heart
of it, whatever it is
we’re walking on
Eggshell, World
about to be born.

When you were four years old
Twirlability was your guiding rule
for dressing every day
And now you choose
from all the mountains of
satin and lace this you choose this
dress constructed as flower petals
just before they bloom
You choose the dress that twirls
and swirls and opens around you
You, who were lured here by love
You, who dislike poetry
You, who mistrust sentimental tears
You choose a dress this lovely dress shaped
like dreams for the future laced
in every seam with memories
a dress intricate as a flower
a dress layered as a poem

Reach for the chiming alarm
and it all rushes back home
What to eat how to dress
a poem and did the roof hold
and what is this new ache
between the shoulders?

while they clamber aboard
Advice arrives
like the steam rising
all along the train platform
always the same advice

Open your hands
The advice it never says
if this is to give or receive
or just to shake loose
the crumbs and scraps
the dregs of what you
keep clinging to

Stuck to the gray sky
brushed hills of ghostly trees
their black bones barely showing
Here in town, white billows rise
from every morning’s
industrious factory

Just once, let the smokestacks
puff out grass green robin
egg blue yellow of new leaves
almost open oh let there be
letters to the editor
protesting color pollution
while someone inside
ignoring the press
cooks up spring

Transitions are hardest
Huddled winter house
encased, bristled with ice spears
Now the roof over the wide porch
sags beneath mounded snow
Spring, nearly here, warm and
welcome but first we must
survive the snow melt
Do not buckle, do not break
beneath the weight
of all that’s disappearing

What about the others? What about
those who turn down the wrong dirt road
late at night and end up in deep trouble
mudslide or military coup, runaway train
or runaway lion, a robber a killer
a man with a knife
Where were their angels why not
softly glowing or armed with
mighty swords? Asleep? Off duty?
Do not tell me
It’s A Mystery.
That is no answer for those others
with their hands held out,
waiting for their angels.

He said,
“I can’t remember
about dragons.
Were they real? I know
not now, but ever?
Were they real once,
even long ago?
No?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
But for a minute,”
he said,
“I just wasn’t sure.”

Magic lurks inside
queer unnamed pockets of time
those seconds while
we’re still falling
before we crash back into this real world,
the world where we know for sure