Fresh-Wind Lake-Green Pine-Time
Fresh-Wind Lake-Green Pine-TimeMore from the Big Lake Poems anthology. I wish that I could make you smell the way my grandparents' house near Lake Michigan smelled. Or that I could smell it again. Maybe this poem will help.
The grama-grampa house
was not on Lake Michigan
but you could smell the big lake
in their house
as the crow flies grampa and I could walk
to the big lake and we did
at least once a week every week
of my life since birth give or take
except when we moved to Alaska
or during my years in college
until I moved away
but i came back and walked with him
he took my kids for walks to the beach
our oldest three that is
he wasn't getting around too well
when the youngest came
the lake inhabited the grama-grampa house
in scents of sand and wind
wood and rain
and an indefinable fragrance signature of Lake Michigan alone
I smelt it first and best
coming upstairs third step from the top
of the cool yellow speckle- tile basement
where I was sent to fetch canned cherries
from the cedar wood pantry
that grampa built for grandma
for a dessert called
Cherries in the Snow.
we saved some things
from the grama grampa house
in a box sealed tight
to preserve the wind-fresh lake-green pine-time smell
for awhile if you sniffed soul-deep
there was a whiff of it
wind-fresh lake-green pine time
but now its all gone
i can evoke scent-memory a little
with feel-think smell- remembering
i can conjure up the grama-grampa house
but only a little and its fading fast
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