When you look at old photos <br />You can smell the rooms, <br />The books, antiques and musty looms; <br />Fading wallpaper, rusty pails, <br />Fabric'd walls, with homemade nails. <br /> <br />Look even closer, and you might smell <br />Left-over dinner, hanging in air, <br />The dirty clothes and lye soap there; <br />Boiled in water, from a dank old well. <br /> <br />Closer yet, and there's dried out flowers <br />On vellum printed with scented ink, <br />From lavender fields, grown right in back- <br />And steam so thick, the walls might weep. <br /> <br />In the heat, the fabrics send <br />Their odors wafting to any wind, <br />And the brown tinctures on the table <br />Send their smells too, if they are able. <br /> <br />And that bit of scent goes in everything; <br />As in a letter, bound for spring, <br />So that when opened, the reader might pause <br />To sniff the drying lavender’s thawing. <br /> <br />For all enclosed in that little post, <br />Is the odor of blankets and linen things, <br />And spices piled high, on a kitchen shelf; <br />You can sense the love from many miles away- <br />Fresh from the house, of another's day.<br /><br />Patti Masterman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/another-s-day/
