Karen Whitmore

A Scent of Yesterday

The morning sun dappled by leaves

on the floor a flickering pattern,

a whisper of scent

fleeting

through the open window,

moist earth 

pulling me to past summer days,

years vanishing

our ages rolling backward

to summers of youth

and a home that arose

from a flower filled field

accompanying wet sheets hung out to dry

and flashes of color

birds flitting in and out of the bushes

completing tasks before the languid afternoon

took our energy

and we sat and drank lemonade

moving with the shade of the house

or lying prone

baking away

the winter in ourselves.

A moist scent of earth

fresh before the overlay of city made it sharp,

a scent that held the essence of summer

and youth and promise

retrieved from under layers of life,

a fleeting fragment of another time

another place.