.
.
Something Unseen
Something unseen
is calling,
softer than breath,
more faint than touch;
it’s always there pulsing
through veins - the
elusive smell
(and unique to you)
of homeland.
Maybe: it’s the smell of
the first day of Spring.
One morning it’s
suddenly here: with
a perfume pure and cool
full of dew on farmland,
the pale scent of the sun
and a light taste of salt
added from the nearby sea.
Maybe: it’s the smell of
a mid-summer day
when stones and yellow clay
add their flinty char
into the hard burnt air
and the oil of Eucalypts
and the sweet sweat
of a horse compete.
Maybe: the smell
has been obscured
by all the years, new faces,
new places and your
self-made role in the world:
yet the blood knows - it pulls
you toward home just as strongly
as the new-born baby is drawn
toward the breast by the smell
of its own mother’s milk.
