Sensory Perception

No matter where I am, whether on a cold winter walk home,

 or a sultry stroll in a warmer country than mine,

the scent of wood smoke rising up from condo chimneys

or from tiny eating places tucked into jungle,

stir up buried images:

of me wrapped in my grandfather’s wool cardigan, on my way

to the Pacific Ocean every chance I get, to nestle in damp sand,

underneath a million shimmering stars as wood smoke rises

from a glowing fire on the beach, igniting the primal and

blurring the borders of here and there,

the sense of other, closer than I think, as time dissolves,

leaving my heart wide open.

A pair of Merganser ducks captured on an early spring day at Lost Lagoon on the edge of Stanley Park (Vancouver, B.C.).