On a Lovefeast of Yesterdays
No word for the scent, we say, on a road of dips
on our way to the sweetest spot in the foothills
where we ate spice cookies, airy, crisp as autumn
with cakes baked right next to the blacksmiths,
a hedge-maze by a church with an acre cemetery—
none of it tasted bitter, rather, sweet without smoke
swirling in our lungs, without honey-laced beeswax,
nor the rolled cigars lying asleep in their boxes
for shipment, nor barrels of molasses, nor hickory,
not tar or nougat or malt whiskey, not gingersnaps
or chocolate chess pie or black sugar. We relish
a lovefeast of yesterdays, pin up elusive syllables of
fragrance wafting through avenues in search of
loaves or leaves cured in bakeshops, the houses
of shivering air elusive as an aroma of nostalgia—
mulching a ferny floor in the hills, a festive crush of
tobacco drying with a brisk sweetness of angels
observing us with eyes on a world where the name
of a thing is not the thing itself.
