First it was Nashville with its pall of autumn hickory smoke,
Warm quilts kept in cedar chests,
A dim memory for fifteen years,
Then Pittsburgh,
In the early years of the stink of the coke works
Down the Monongahela,
Then moving up and buying a house,
with the smell of sumac and honeysuckle high in the summer,
the sweet leaves in the autumn,
the mown grass and pinewood buzz saw projects,
the tinge of freezing cold and the fresh smell of snow,
sweetgrass, cedar, the wet earth camping in West Virginia.
Suddenly, everything changed.
The hickory is gone replaced with a strange tinge,
Black bog dried in the sun, a smell called Bord na Mona,
The whole place smells of it.
Fried potatoes and curry, wet limestone, wet earth, wet wool,
Wet, wet, wet, the cool temperate smell of rain.
And a heavenly scent in summer like no other,
Called sweet woodbine,
Silent forests smell of moss everywhere,
The mild stink of brackish rivers close to the shore,
Liffey, Shannon, Foyle.
Old oak and thick fabric
Full of mellow malt and the rich tinge of turf and coal,
This place is far from hickory smoked hams and honeysuckle,
Of sumac and locusts,
I can’t even hear a cricket here in Dublin,
Or Dingle, or Derry,
But I don’t seem to mind.

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