Spice Garden Poetry - This Evening Slicing Lemons

This Evening Slicing Lemons

My sharp knife halves these orbs.

Oily fragrance coats my fingertips.

I twist juice from their yellow cups,

and in their mist I squint and see a yellow sun,

a bright green awning, the gnarled hands of

that Spanish elder presenting me a

burst of lemon coolness in the searing heat

of old Granada.

My fingers remember the slippery

chill of the red clay cup.

I can tilt my head back and feel the ache
from the sudden cold swallow.
I squint and see the distant Sierra Nevada
through the icy fumes rising
from that citrus nectar – all this,
all this before my kitchen counter.

- Susan Miller-Lindquist
  
 

I am intrigued by the idea that scents induce such strong memories that one can be completely transported sensually back across time and space to a particular point in one's experience.