Do you smell like black coffee? Percolating over a campfire at the break of dawn? Or gasoline, motor oil, grease and garage?
From sloshing red canister and wiping up with red rags?
Or freshly churned dirt?
After toiling away in your land, digging holes for new plant after new plant.
Do you smell like baseball gloves?
The worn out leather, tossed dirt, ripped up grass, and sweat stains
Or the interior of an old car?
All the years restoring seats and leather and woodwork and engines and pumps.
Or horses, dried manure, saddle leather, the wool blankets ‘neath saddles, and hay and feed bags?
Or maybe you smell like the locker room?
The wet towel wars, and shower steam thickening the air.
Or an old tackle box?
Metal of worn out pocket knives, and earthworm guts stuck to bent fish hooks, strung by grandpa at daybreak
Or a construction site?
Cutting steel with a torch, the excavated deep earth, drying concrete, wood frames measured, cut and placed.
Or do you smell like bacon?
Pan frying on the stove, sided with pancakes and fresh warm milk.
Or a navy ship?
Wartime, ghosts and red lead paint, hydraulic fluid, boiler exhaust, and saltiness sealed from sunlight and fresh air.
Or do you smell like newspaper?
The mixture of ink set to thinly cut paper, rolled up and tossed at the door.
Or maybe you smell like splitting firewood?
The sharpening stone on your over-used axe, to the release of oak cleaved in two, bark chips stuck to your sweaty flannel shirt.
Or canvas tents?
Fabric and mildewy musk, the sod cloth floors and frame poles held by stakes and guy ropes and tensioners.
What do you smell like?
A Poet in Hibernation 