That Smell
That smell I know
But can not place
Is from my youth
A certain space
That smell I know
Is so familiar
Musty and cold
Like an root cellar
That smell I know
Brings me right back
Crawling, exploring
But not an attic
Now my nose knows
Like incense in church
That smell I remember
Playing under the porch
Bill MacEachern 2018
Mother said of all the mid-summer flowers she loved best,
The common garden dahlia was clearly her favorite.
Every Spring she carefully hand-placed the sturdy tubers,
Tenderly caring for each one, watched it bravely shoot up,
Growing, until large luscious red, orange, and purple blooms
Burst forth like the golden globular sun they resembled.
Some have noticed strolling through a garden of dahlias
Is very much like sorting through large boxes of buttons, *
All sizes, shapes, and colors waiting to be selected.
Mother saved the bulbs of her favorites from year to year
Carefully wintered them over in the damp root cellar,
Watching for earliest signs of tender green shoots sprouting.
Mother told us after she became seriously ill,
To make sure a quilt of dahlias lay over her grave.
When she left us at the end of that torturous July
For her bier we had a blanket assembled from her beds
Of the species of daisies, zinnias, chrysanthemums
And, as she requested, several pure-white dahlias.
*idea from "dahlias" on Internet
FIRST PLACE WINNER
Written March 11, 2021
For "Flower-Flowers (Imagery) Contest
by Constance La France
Each line contains 14 syllables
Survivor Hope Chests
by Odin Roark
I’m of flesh and blood
hearing distant melodies
somewhere way back
behind the leafless tree,
the chicken coop,
or root cellar,
where survival is stored
for cold and wintered summers,
when breath’s rejection remains constant.
I’m of sight watching today’s resident spider
in furry overcoat waiting at web’s corner
bidding flies that never come,
knowing death as they do,
determined to live another day.
I’ll smell yesterdays forever,
for death’s rancid decay never settles,
under-tarp dankness forever stays in my hair,
and once fragrant flowers are but memory.
I’ve tasted it all,
the Red Cross coffee,
the trashcan discards,
the airdrop packets,
and even the occasional meal,
but most of the time,
the longing bile of my emptiness.
But…
I can still touch my toes,
sometimes of blistered history,
sometimes of flapping sole
clinging tenaciously as only friend.
And…
I tell myself tomorrow will come.
There will be another day.
I can make it.
I heard the owl call my name,
like a backbeat in a child's voice,
etched in shadows of a father's grave,
lonely echoes on a frosted night...
at dawn I'll be immortal again,
renewed by a workaday
and the frigid fiscal year,
my soul stays leafless in damp moonlight...
do we end days defibrillating
in hospice and parchment or
under foreign suns twitching and fluid,
while kestrels dive as doves take flight...
why only in the dark hours,
the soul's midnight,
can we see farther, deeper,
nightdreams wander like a restless wight...
experienced or just imagined,
dreamt but never realized,
conceived yet unexecuted,
an inner eye begs keener sight...
as yellow eyed and dark skinned children,
play with tattered banners,
laughing at rusted armor, bleaching bones,
and history cries that might makes right...
as I, stale pilgrim of no progress,
catch faint odors of war,
in the molded root cellar of my mind,
as hope catches wind like a child's kite.
Comes silently
on sorrel moccasins
roosted on tortoiseshell
of root cellar
singing, stumbling
in numb imaginings
lit with half-light
vegetables
squeezed in jars
of russet and avocado
above
a cornice of sky
split with laughter
searching
for broken arrowheads
gold and silver among leaves
air billowed white
from lips
soft frail bones
of snowflakes
magically appear
scattering in breath
taken away
into apple night
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