Observation
What a poem smells like
This place smells richly of the mundane,
of cars and trucks, and hot tarmac in summer,
of the rich tapestry of the gum trees and the small patch of
roses and carnations in the park just down the road.
Its ordinary nature is so heightened
that you don’t even notice it unless
you concentrate, take a deep breath
through your nose, and stop and look,
really look, and draw in all the ordinary things.
My grandfather told me in passing that,,,
and recounted the smells and behaviour of his chooks
and their meanings, one way and another.
When I hear that, in my head,
I see the chooks, white and red and brown,
scratching at the ground, smell the hay in their nests,
the wet chook shit, see the eggs, speckled
white, or brown, and hear the inevitable sizzle
of mum frying eggs of a morning.
The ordinariness invades me,
the mundane becomes magical momentarily.
It’s here that I find your mundane
is reborn, your fresh smell after a shower,
the almost alabaster of the skin of your cheeks,
and your small dimples and twinkling eyes
when my mundane magic overcomes
all my manufactured eccentricities.
