Tuesday Poetics: Empire of Scent

Grace is our prompter today for dVerse Poetics. She asks us to write about scents from our childhood or, scents in general. I have chosen to write about the library in my childhood home and the scents of it and the house in general. I have written a lot of poems about scents, usually night scents. So this is a departure for me. Come join us over at dVerse and find a new favorite poet! We’re closing the Pub down for a couple of weeks after Thursday for a vacation. The doors will be open though so come visit and catch up on past posts!

The Library of Smells
Book sniffin’ is an art I learned in my childhood.
Macbeth smelled of old blood and Little Women
smelled of banana bread.
All of Zane Grey smelled of dust and purple sage
and the Justice League comics smelled of potato chips.
Charles Dickens’ shelf smelled of must and mold and
old wedding cake and gruel
while TS Eliot smelled of coal fires and fog.
Salinger smelled of bubble gum and Tom Collins
and Dickinson smelled of old roses and apples.
Batman smelled of gasoline and
The one Archie comic smelled of drive-in hamburgers,
and Wilde smelled of potpourri and cigars.
The Bible smelled of incense and wine
and Sophocles and Euripides
and all the Greek plays and philosophies –
well, they smelled like Mrs. Karenakis’ kitchen
during the holidays.
Whitman and Kerouac both surprisingly smelled
of cold wind and Snyder smelled of cherry blossoms.
The whole library smelled of beeswax and lemon oil
and the vase of roses or magnolias on the center table.
Fried chicken wafting from the kitchen –
hot biscuits and pound cake.
I miss these scents of my childhood.
Somehow, books don’t smell the same today.

public domain image, closest I could find to my childhood home libary