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Dave Bonta
I lost my sense of smell for just two days. When it came back, the first odor I noticed was soil, which still surprises me this time of year. When I was a kid, the only time the temperature rose above freezing in January was for a few days of warm weather toward the end of the month, a little false spring we called January Thaw.
white clippings
from my haircut
winter garden
Rachel went back to work after a ten-day self-quarantine. She had what might’ve been the common cold, though five of the other people who looked after the same special-needs person tested positive for Covid. That’s the hell of it, the not knowing whether one might be infectious or immune.
winter
afternoon moon
She smells like home to me.
I like the smell of you
The touch of you,
The taste of you
The sight of you
The sound of you.
This is me.
from the sunsets
to the rubbish on the Harbor bottom
fermenting so bubbles
of the gas formed from the putrefaction
keep coming up and you watch them break
on the surface and imagine the odor
which is true
at low-tide that you can't stand the smell
if you live with the Harbor Cove or the Inner
Harbor to your side
On Sunday morning, then he comes
To church, and everybody smells
The blacking and the toilet soap
And camphor balls from Mr. Wells.
He wears his whiskers in a bunch,
And wears his glasses on his head.
I mustn't call him Old Man Wells--
No matter--that's what Father said.
And when the little blacking smells
And camphor balls and soap begin,
I do not have to look to know
That Mr. Wells is coming in.
I liked to go to the branch today;
I liked to play with the wiggletails there.
And five little smells and one big smell
Were going round in the air.
One was the water, a little cold smell,
And one was mud and that was more,
And one was the smell of cool wet moss,
And one was some fennel up on the shore.
And the one big smell came out of the mint,
And one was something I couldn't tell.
And the five little ones and the big one
All went together very well.