Delighted, I plunged my face deep into the bush,
laden as it was with slender trumpeted white flowers
and I pulled the generous scent into my being.
“Honeysuckle,” James confirmed, stepping
closer to inhale and for a moment we lingered,
infused with the lavish perfume of June,
and when we pulled away, he said, “You know,
the ticks love hanging out in the honeysuckle.”
We stared at each other then in emerging realization
and began to brush our hands across our bare arms,
our bare cheeks, our bare necks. Is it true
every joy has, lurking inside it, an insidious fear?
I know how beauty calls across the spectrum to its opposite,
how they chime together like meditation bells
inviting us into the all that is. What surprised me
was the laughter that spilled forward then,
the way I flopped over at the waist like a rag doll,
giggling, disgust and mirth mingling, conspiring
to open me. Long after we walked away, I could still
smell it, the glory of the flowers, how it hung in the air.
Could still feel it, the fear, how it crawled on my skin
with its eight quick legs. Could still taste it, the laughter
of friends, how it lingered sweet on my lips, like sugared
maple, like the juice of ripe berries, like honey.
Posts Tagged ‘scent’
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, honesuckle, james crews, scent, tick on June 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Olfactory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 70s, affection, granddaughter, grandmother, hair, perm, scent, smell on June 14, 2026| 2 Comments »
“The airport smells like ammonia,” says Karen
as we sit and wait for our plane. It does. Sharp.
Stinging. She’s off to Minnesota, I’m off to New York,
and as we catch up about children and jobs,
I take a limbic trip to my childhood home, and I’m nine
and my hair is wrapped tight around thin,
pink plastic curlers. We’re in the upstairs
bathroom with little flowers in the wallpaper,
and my grandmother is squirting
something stinky and cold on my scalp,
dousing me in the terrible smell.
She tops me off with a white shower cap and
admonishes me to be patient. Though perhaps
I was still, I was not patient. Staring at myself
in the bathroom mirror, I wanted to be beautiful.
I wanted to be treated like a grown up. I wanted
to please my grandmother. After processing,
after neutralizing, after the curlers came out,
and after the final wash, I did not feel beautiful.
Or grown up. But I did feel, at least for that moment,
cared for by a woman who was seldom warm.
Almost fifty years later, I recognize the perm
for what it was, a four-hour hug. And there,
next to gate 3A, I smell it so strong, her love.
Shh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, lilac, scent, silence on May 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
So soft and sweet the scent
of this lilac’s first bloom
I stop trying to praise it
and instead breathe it in—
the eager vibration
of hummingbird wings
says everything.
Two Radiances
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, loss, scent 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—
What’s Really at Stake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cascade Mountains, mountains, nature, pine, scent, trees 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.
One Valentine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged intimacy, love, scent on February 13, 2025| 8 Comments »
in a room full of roses
my favorite scent
your skin
I Couldn’t See the Elk, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged animal, autumn, creature, elk, human, scent 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.
Tender Presence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, love, roses, scent 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.
This Is How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amygdala, autumn, brain, death, scent 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.
Ascent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alpine clover, perfume, scent, wildflower 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.