“Book Shelf” by Kyle Poirier
Scent implants memories
Deep in the regions
Where instinct and impulse
Lead unconscious lives
They sleep until called
By odd stimulations
Off time, out of place
But familiar no less
Though decades may pass
Since first scent encounter
Its slightest recurrence
Can involuntarily
Flush from our brains
Recollections enriched
With circumstance tied
To that unique learned smell
A whiff of her perfume
The nose of that vintage
The intimate odors
Of bedsheets at dawn
Sweet fragrances fanned
From her garden of blooms
By the flounce of her sundress
Immodestly twirled
Cracked-leather mustiness
Seeps from dry bindings
I rescued from stacks
Crowding bookseller stalls
Hung from medieval quays
On the Left Bank in Paris
Where sleep is no fit
Companion of night
Morning kitchen aromas
Waft up the back staircase
To lift me from slumber
With crave for the day
My appetite whetted
For bacon and biscuits
And beating my colleagues
To American dreams
Acrid gasoline fumes
Pervaded the cubby
Of an auto garage where
I learned to play poker
And came to realize the
Professional purpose of
Pin-up girl calendars
Sockets and ratchets
Redolent orange peels
Clustered like blossoms
Direct on blue flames
Of a porcelain stove
Where their gradual char
Gave a zest to the air
A homespun technique
For welcoming friends
A palmful of talcum
Piques nostrils with rush
Of pure innocence
Nuzzled from infants
Who snuggled my neck
And filled my tomorrows
With joys that yesterday
Could not imagine
Faint pungence of rubber
Will tickle nostalgia
For cloakrooms festooned
With galoshes and slickers
Where we might be banished
By humorless nuns
For class misbehavior
Or dunce-like performance
Salt air slips in slices
Through my open moonroof
With vivid recall of
A weathered gray beach house
Its tumbled-stone jetty
Where I met Aquinas
Surf cooling my feet
Spray cleansing my soul
Hot barbecue tidbits
Curl hickory smoke
With power of transport
To summers abandoned
On green Catskill slopes
Where I rode as a lad
A red rented trike
Grill-scarred hotdog in hand
Treading my forest land
Kicking up pine needles
Harks back to Christmas trees
Dropping their scent upon
Presents that exercised
Curious muscles
Erector sets, microscopes
Crystal radio kits
Laundry starch triggers
A callow vignette
White stiff pointed collar
Crookedly split by the silk
Of an ill-knotted tie
That crazily flapped
With each gyrating step
To a rock-and-roll beat
Pipesmoke laced drapes
Soften oak-mullioned panes
That lit yellowed pages
Of Dante and Kant
The overstuffed arms
Of my reading chair
Propping the wisdom
Of classical genius
Uncannily keen
And accurate smell
Is the paramount sense
Of numerous creatures
Whose very survival
Rests on its recalled
Identification
Of peril abroad
Unerring it locates
Foul foes and fair friends
Compelling behaviors
That follow the nose
I’m thinking we could be
More truthfully human
If only we had
The sharp sense of a dog
(originally posted December 2013)
Poesy plus Polemics 