PERFUME: A POEM

Photo: Toan Klein

SUSAN GLICKMAN

Perfume

A dab on the left wrist conjures

a Russian birch-wood in summer,

green leaves filtering the sweet green light.

Two children – one girl, one boy –

help their grandmother search for mushrooms.

In the city a revolution is happening

but it hasn’t reached them yet

so their scuffed brown boots avoid only

the berjozovik

shrouded in leaf mulch and rotting wood;

precious mushrooms to carry home

unbruised for Baba’s soup.

The right wafts jasmine

jangling with bracelets of gold,

the palm a languorous scrawl of henna.

Wedding music plays

so a blue vein throbs

billowing fragrance into air

freighted with rosewater, turmeric, sandalwood

and an undercurrent – not unpleasant –

of healthy sweat.

It’s the groom with eyes outlined in kohl,

fine eyes that glance shyly at us

then away.

Next to the neck, mushroom stalk of reverie,

where atoms of scent disperse like mist

from a cataract that falls and falls

and never reaches bottom

and I’m at the library of Alexandria

arms full of imperiled books,

books I will never read in languages

I will never speak:

wood smoke, tang of parchment,

leather, mildew, gilt,

filling my hungry lungs

with their lost knowledge.

Susan Glickman is a lapsed academic and full-time dog-walker. She works as a freelance editor and goes to art school in Toronto. Her 7th collection of poetry with Signal Editions of Vehicule Press, What We Carry, appears in April 2019; it will be her 15th book overall. She apologizes sincerely to all the trees who sacrificed their lives for her writing.

from What We Carry (Signal, 2019). By permission of the author.