The Nose Knows

One whiff can transport you

across continents, across

decades. Can recreate a person

 – for better or for worse –

so completely that you might

as well be standing in them.

Can drop you on a street corner,

hideaway, or kitchen that had

long been forgotten.

It is our most primal sense,

apparently the last one that

flees our failing body. So...

...if at some point I lie,

a withered shell still clinging

to this life, I ask that someone

hold beneath my nose a token

from the tideline, rich with the

briny stink of the sea, a brush

damp with paint and redolent

with oil of cloves, and a pan still

hot from the stove, asizzle with

onions frying in butter. Thus

will I be set like a bloodhound

onto the path back home.