Aromatherapy

The crafty shop, claustrophobic

with its hooked rugs and sweatered

teddy bears, its pungent potpourri

of rose or watermelon, sends me flying

as I did long ago from my mother's

fox fur collar, the pointed noses

under stony eyes nudging

my cheeks, wafting Arpége.

I do my best to empathize

with my friend Ginny, who,

when her dog died,

longed for puppy breath,

but for me, nostalgia is good

Canadian air blowing across a driveway

in Detroit, ozone after lightning,

a peeled orange.

Elegant men's stores up their sales

by piping in a subliminal scent

called "line-dried linen."

More power to them

and to those who treat subway patrons

to the smell of chocolate chip

cookies baking, causing them

to shove each other less.

I'm grateful I can no longer catch

a whiff of my grade school cafeteria

with its scalded metal trays, hot

dogs, canned peas, waxy milk cartons

but still savor an odoriferous moment

in the old Neisner's on Six Mile Road

where I stood listening

to Fats Domino find his thrill,

where inklings of romance mingled

in a bouquet with roasted peanuts

and cheap chocolate, mothballs,

oilcloth and Old Dutch.