Puff Of Smoke Poems

The whole house turns to look
when you open the door.
Nothing gleams or sparkles.
No breathtaking view peeks
through the windows.
But everything glows, just a little,
in the late afternoon sun—
your shaggy yard and
well-intentioned garden, your
dusty floors and
dishes waiting in the cupboards.
Inside you all
something shifts and settles down.
The couch gives a contented sigh
when you put down your suitcase.

Written in response to a Cooking Poetry prompt at the ever-delicious Red Wolf Poems. 

Every kitchen needs a window with a view of a Maple Tree.
You can cook in any mood: People always need to eat.
The right music helps.
Opera for Parmesan pasta, etcetera…
Garnish the pasta with parsley butter.

No curtains, but plants on the bookcase are lovely.
Ask the maple to stand just so, limbs spread
so you can watch the leaves change.
Bake your own bread—loaves shaped by hand.
Place a bowl of hot water in the oven for perfect crust.

Of course there’s a bookcase.

While bread bakes, mix spread of cream cheese, rosemary, chives.
Robins may build a nest in the maple. When deciding
what to cook, consider what will fill the air
between you, how birds inside their shells will grow
and dream enveloped in the scent of your kitchen.

Cotton tablecloths. No exceptions.

Almost anything tastes better topped with
toasted pine nuts and butter.
Except brownies. For those, mix in cinnamon and cayenne.
Always buy the best chocolate you can afford.
If there’s any bread left, slice it and eat with the chocolate.

Some day next year, a robin may perch in that tree,
and look in at you, head cocked just so, as if remembering.

Keep the windows open
so the other can hear
when one of you begins to sing.

Writing is like building a wall. …The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn’t build it it won’t be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in. ~ Neil Gaiman, National Novel Writing Month Pep Talk, retrieved July 14, 2014 from http://nanowrimo.org/pep-talks/neil-gaiman

Here’s to remembering what we need is walls
and more than walls. Humming, go to work,
build this sweet surprise, sweaty satisfaction of story
where there were only tumbled rocks in a field.
But don’t forget the thrill of windows,
view made more beautiful because
it frames friends leaning on the sill.
Don’t forget the necessary doors
where we practice leaving and arriving
both of us mastering these intricate steps,
together, alone, together, repeat and repeat,
if we are very lucky,
for our whole long lives.

Clearing out the old, a bit of magazine housekeeping. This found poem, composed of phrases from an article about baseball in an airline in-flight magazine and, from a fashion magazine, a makeup article about Kate Winslet.

Show up.
It’s not going to be perfect right away
Picture all those collisions
with the old guard
with the last year
the roots are too heavy.
You are always Trying
with stolen faces
tubes of lipstick
and family money.
Just stop.
Go back to the beginning
feel the night
how it softens
past Time
how it opens itself
to darkness. Perfect.
There is no such thing
as Finished.

Written in response to prompt at the lovely site, Red Wolf Poems

Sparkling refraction, also known as
Above. Can be said of waterlilies
green vibrations, patterned water,
arched surface of heaven
swaying over bewildered fish,
fish still trying to take all this in—
blackened boats sank here
planks softened, rounded by water
enormous dark pearls full of
opal bones holding dead sailor dreams.
Fish scatter and gather, drink in much that puzzles—
horses and buckets, God and handwriting,
Secrets. Kindness. Verse. Much they ignore, consider it
ravings of the dying. What need could there be
for a bucket, or a creature unlikely as a horse?
Long shadows of waterlilies are kin to handwriting
leaves of grass green in neat rows is verse,
which means secret, which is soft.
Kindness, the oldest teach, is the name for
what we move through all our lives
this shining lullaby, what the sailors meant by God.

third cup of morning coffee
and a poem
breeze stretches out
stirs the maples
into their own green music
while I make mine

While the world builds poems
of beauty without words
Humans build other things.
Israel, Palestine
Your storied histories
Stop here.
You will always be famous
to me, now, Not for wars
between nations,
Not for fierce love of home,
Not for the bravest of you
pushing through deep sand
with olive branches
but for this—
for raising those
Who murder teenage boys.
If I could ask you anything
I would ask, How
can your countries not
collapse in grief beneath this?
And you (perhaps) would answer
with a litany of the long, dark sins
of my country, which are many.
And while we shout our true and
Righteous accusations,
somewhere on this earth,
this earth that would build beauty,
mothers weep at children’s graves.

blue-shirted walker
gray dog, yellow leash
above these flash
cardinal, maple
one flying in front of the other
another sample, art or
is it craft
or something altogether
different
World’s best habit
let it never grow tired
of building these pictures
from one thing and another
let me never grow tired
of noticing.

Measure heat by
how grateful we
become in its absence
early morning grass
cool and damp
beneath us
green decorated
with clover,
flecked with the
iridescent webs
of optimistic spiders.

Summer keeps writing
passionate notes
wherever you turn what else
could be meant by
pink geranium petals
floating to land on your leg
while you read on the front porch?
Even now, summer can’t stop—
She signals as you write—
splash of goldfish in the pond,
note stuck to the damp sparkle
of lemonade pitcher
Read it quick
before the green ink
dampens and evaporates.