The Secret Langage of Smell

It began with the coffee this morning.
The beans, even before I ground them.
Strong, Dark. Memories of my father filled my head.
He drank a pot or two every day. Memories
of mornings with my wife, sitting and talking
before the day began, before my schedule changed
and I find myself a few days a week leaving early.

Later it was the bacon. Fresh off the diner’s griddle,
it smells stronger than it tastes, but there too,
memories. Of summers on my grandfather’s farm,
two breakfasts, one with my grandfather,
one with my grandmother. Always bacon,
thick and fresh cut from hogs raised
and then cured in the smokehouse across the yard,
Entire summers in a smell.

I drove here in the old truck my father owned,
and then my sister. It no longer smells of cigarettes
but it smells of two decades of use. Oil spilled in the back.
Tools. Bales of hay. THey all live there.
He lives there too, and my grandfather who had
his own old truck, an international Harvester,
red and slow and smelling of work.

I drive with the windows down
unless the weather is unbearably hot,
WHen I am not in the truck, I drive my convertible,
top down more than most people do.
60 degrees is enough to drive with air all around me.
Breathing in the farms I pass. Fresh cut hay.
Manure. On long trips or trips to the city
you breathe in factories and bakeries
and whatever is cooking at the restaurants
that want to draw you in.

There is a lady in the diner.
She does not come often,
but she wears the perfume
my first passionate girl friend wore.
She wears too much of it – I can smell it
all the way across the tables and stools,
but I don’t mind.
I don’t mind breathing in youth
and from that one fragrance
the memories of every woman I have loved
flashes through my mind.

My nose is not that sensitive, yet it is filled
with memories and placeholders as I travel
through my world. A secret language of history.
Mine. A world whose air knows no time or space,
moving backwards and fowards
at the speed of smell.

About this poem.

No hidden messages in this one. I love how smell brings back memories and emotions. Today they are particularly strong. Off to work. An hour’s drive with the top down on the convertible. Yeah, that should do it.

Tom