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Posts Tagged ‘scent’

Two Radiances

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 15, 2025| 11 Comments »


 
hours ago
I lit a golden candlestick
now only honey-scented space—
 
years since you’re gone
everywhere I go,
the perfume of you—

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What’s Really at Stake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks  
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.

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One Valentine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 13, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
in a room full of roses
my favorite scent
your skin
 

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I Couldn’t See the Elk, But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 15, 2024| 11 Comments »




I smelled them, that sweet,
viscous scent that falls somewhere
between musk and vanilla,
between urine and cut grass.
The kind of scent that makes
me crinkle my nose in almost
disgust, then inhale deeply
as if the body can’t get enough.
Primal scent. Animal scent.
Scent I can’t find inside walls.
Scent that reminds me I, too,
am a creature. And there
beneath the blue autumn sky
I felt reclaimed by the earth,
reclaimed by the goldening
meadow, reclaimed by the boggy
wallow in the valley’s shallow cleft,
as if I might leave behind forever
the land of pavement and frying pans,
car troubles and saran wrap.
As if I, too, might roll around
in that slick stretch of mud
and become who I was
before I knew how to want,
how to thank, how to plan,
how to pray.

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Tender Presence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 7, 2023| 10 Comments »

In those days when I didn’t know
how to live, a friend gave me
a cream of whipped roses
to smooth into my cheeks.
The scent helped me be
in my own skin.
Years later, it still comforts me,
scent of rose, palmarosa,
rose geranium.
It smells like resilience,
like generosity,
like love that continues to grow,
like a prayer carried by the wind.
 

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This Is How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2023| 8 Comments »


It’s the chill air, say the scientists,
that allows the nose to delineate
the musky smell of autumn,
not like the warm summer air
that traps and mashes
all the aromatic molecules together.
No, it’s the constricting nature of cold
that lets us pick out the sweet loam
of dried grass and peaty scent of sugars
breaking down in the leaves.
 
But it’s memory that says,
Isn’t this smell wonderful.
It’s the amygdala that relates it
to the childhood joy
of skipping through gutters of oak leaves
and the adult joy of jumping
in great piles of cottonwood leaves
with my son.
 
In this golden moment,
I’m every age I’ve ever been in the fall,
and every version of me basks
in low autumn light. This is how
I breathe in the fragrance of death
and decay and moldering,
and think isn’t it wonderful, this life.

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Ascent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 9, 2023| 7 Comments »


 
There is a long ridgeline
below the towering spire
of Lizard Head summit
where the alpine clover
grow in vast pink mounds
and their sweet scent
suffuses the high, thin air
with a perfume so strong
not even today’s wind
could blow it away.
For long moments we were held
by the fragrance
the way insects
are preserved in amber—
it stilled us completely.
We belonged to the beauty.
With deep, intentional breaths
we pulled the floral sweetness
into our beings
until everything was clover,
clover, clover.
 

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Letting Go of Knowing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 13, 2023| 14 Comments »


 
 
Walking in the sweet honey
and musky scented woods,
I keep searching for what smells
so good, until finally I let
myself be content to walk
in the woods with a honey scent,
and I give up for a time
on naming the world,
and let a step be a step,
let a scent be a scent
and know only I am lucky,
lucky to walk in the musky woods,
the air so refreshing, so sweet.

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All of It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 15, 2023| 5 Comments »


 
 
Broken,
bare-hearted
naked in the catastrophe,
I smell it,
the sweet perfume
of apricot blossoms
wafting across
the leafless world.

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What No One Knew Tonight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 18, 2022| 4 Comments »


for Shushana Castle

Anyone with a link
could watch the pixels of her
as they streamed through the ether,
but no one in the world knew she wore oud,
a musky, pungent, smoky scent
that comes from the agar tree.
A scent said to carry prayers.
A scent said to bring serenity.
A scent derived from resin
that appears only when the heartwood of agar
has been infected by fungus, attacked.
It is not lost on her she wears
the perfume of a wounded heart—
rich and heavy, warm and animalistic.
It fills her nose with an olfactory story
that says, I have survived, and damned
if I won’t make of the wound something sweet.
She dons the gift like a secret worn on her sleeve—
something anyone could perceive
if only they come close enough—
there’s so much more than what one can see.

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