“… where there is always scent of something not quite known …”

This quote is a line from Kenneth Steven’s poem ‘Finding’ in his poetry collection ‘Iona: New and Selected Poems.’ I do not write much in the way of poetry, and writing poetry based on someone else’s line is an even rarer occurrence. But this poetic line transported me back to ‘a childhood I did not have.’

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Cast away on an island of dreams

Heading to a childhood I did not have:

The heady aroma of just-mown lawn,

Honeysuckle in the hedgerow,

And peaches, warm from the glass-house;

Dripping with sticky, luscious juice

Or riding bikes through a sunlit wood:

At a time when a bit of mud didn’t matter;

Laughter free, and unrestrained –

Life is simple, creation and creativity united

In body and mind.

The drawing of a field, a five-bar gate,

Blue-remembered hills on a pencilled horizon

A hedge, a crop, a late summer haze.

Ill-thought of now, as memories, real and sharp

As bladed glass, intrude. The drawing ripped, discarded.

Art isn’t real. Creativity for wimps and queers.

Science was king, science was facts.

Nothing proven unless it’s ‘scientifically’ so.

Smells: chemicals registering in the nasal cavity;

An evolutionary device to scent poisonous plants.

All faith was false: not identifiable by equations, nor

Justified by repeatable experiments,

Which reduces us to (mainly) carbon and water.

Belief exists to frighten primitive folks:

Irrational beings who know no better.

And yet the scent would come to me.

A passing moment, a whisper, a caress,

Not quite within reach, known but unknowable.

The scent that percolates a dawn mist, a summer’s breeze:

A prayer’s wish.