memories | Sunflower Poetry

Scent of memories

November 21, 2022 at 3:07 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: memories, poet, poetry, remember, scents

It’s a hint, a wisp of a memory.
The forgotten bite of someone’s
cigarette smoke, or a sweet tang
of pipe tobacco and coffee.

The smell of powder from a
glass dish shaped like a dog.
Special day perfume lingering
on a scarf or sleeve like mist.

Stale smells of old ashtrays,
a lip of Cope or pull of chew.
Was it Juicy Fruit or Kool-Aid
that summer smelled like?

Kitchen smells can tease out
a whole decade of memories.
Car smells can put on miles
recalling maps and road signs.

When I try to recall though
they fade quickly, no hints.
Just a thought of what it
might have smelled like then.

They cross over too, the memories.
Vanilla – candles, air fresheners
or perfume? They me tangle up and
start me on paths worn and forgotten.

They are ambush predators every one.
Sneaking up with feelings and images,
non-tangible senses of things gone.
A tear or a laugh, scars ache and burn.

The scent of a memory lives as an
anchor and a trigger, a way to pull you
back in and awaken some forgotten
place in your heart, to live again.

Some last a fleeting moment, others
linger and bring with them a cascade
of other memories from scent, sound,
taste, touch – a blast from the past.

You can’t hold them, or keep them.
They are butterfly and wasp both,
Brush of something special and
a sting of something with no words.

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Seeds, weeds and geraniums

June 3, 2014 at 9:52 pm (Poetics, Poetry)
Tags: #plant14, ag, dVerse, farm poetry, farming, geraniums, memories, Poetics, poetry, seeding, seeds, weeds

Belly to the soil, fingers in the trough.

Depth and rates to check. Seeds in soil.

Each row rises, orderly and only the

weeds run wild. Taunting. Surviving.

No weeds dare grow in her gardens.

Fierce with knife, spoon and spade.

Grandma grew flowers, vegs and fruit.

Weeds were banished from her order.

III

She hated to see them die in fall.

The geraniums in her random pots.

So in they came, Scraggly. Stinky.

Living in a year round summer.

“Can’t you just….?’ they asked knowing.

Knowing the blank would be always that.

“Just be tame?” or “Just be unlike me?”

I’m sure I’ll always be a weed there,

tossing out the order of someone’s

beloved garden. A dandelion blooming

through cement cracks, a sunflower

in the highway median. Something not

quite right, not really belonging there

and yet thriving where you said I would

die…or where you wanted me to not be.

Seeding requires faith. You gotta let em grow.

No diggin’ them up to see ‘wassup’ when in

the soil they are restin’ dark and moist.

Seeding requires patience. You gotta let them go.

No foolin’ with them once they start to come up

trusting their roots and their leaves to reach.

Seeding has one hand in the soil and one eye

on the sky…prayers of hope rise up and

tears sometimes wash the dirt back down.

But when they rise up, tall and reaching

for the sun’s light to follow, then we see

what the hard work of faith can show!

I am hosting Poetics tonight for dVerse and I’m feeling in the mood for some short stuff…enjoy the other poetry, and plant those words and poems people!