For An Instant

For an instant he is a lad smelling the perfume of a young lady for the first time or maybe for the second or third, olfactory memories are powerful and travel together. Now on this morning, the snow carries a peppermint and lilac scent and he an old man searching for a source. Here comes a ragged flight of crows, he squints in the cold sunlight, dazzled, and yet the crows are more defined now then they would be in a less brilliant light. He recalls the same crows when he was young, the same bright snow almost blue under their wings. Did any of this change - the girl, the crows, the scent, and sense of it all? Later he ponders that when the mind falls into a sensory soup, a medley poured long ago can shed a lifetime in that one moment, an instant that opens like an old book that can be read for the first time once more.