The padded mailer arrived today

It was from my brother – he’s a poetry man you know.

I suspected a birthday card, but not in a puffy-air-filled package.

This felt more like a book – perhaps his newest collection of poems

                Very Exciting!

Inside was a book, but not his

                 instead

A vintage 1967 Rod McKuen, ” Stanyon Street & Other Sorrows”

Before I cracked-open its memory-sense pages

I slowly raised the edge of the book to my nose.

                Long, deep, inhalations – cherishing the flood of olfactory flavors

                                That an old book offers.

Like a fine red-vine wine or a rare-woodland truffle, freshly pulled from damp earth

                Each old book smell is uniquely unique.

His poems are filled with the essence of 1960’s life: mixed love; street struggle; childhood memories; innocence; lost friends; and death.

Subtle notes of rebellious freedom, VW van, Mary Jane and petulia oil, all lifted off my personal memory pages while reading.

Some panned his work — but they do not have the courage to write poetry, nor

A Sense of Smell