If you’ve only ever smelled fir trees covered with freshly fallen snow-
then you haven’t smelled it.
It’s an acquired smell, for sure.
It comes just in between the whiffs of
mashed potatoes
mashed carrots
mashed peas
mashed turkey
hell, mashed ginger-ale for all I know. . .
Somewhere amongst that microwaved menagerie, masked with the smell of eau de toilette,
it lives, and smells sweeter the longer brown sugar bubbles on top of caramelizing yams.  

If you can’t smell it, maybe you can find it.
Not many can, or do.
It hides in plain sight, though.
A lost and found box with accumulated cobwebs - everything still unclaimed.
A flyer for free puppies that no one ever took because they were “too much responsibility.”
Maybe there aren’t enough seekers in this game of empty rooms and blank guest books.
But keep looking, until bingo prize hand-me-downs after school plays look like Oscars.
You won’t see it until it makes you believe that plastic Mardis Gras beads are Tiffany-blue boxes.

It’s not so much in the nose, or the eyes as it is in the endurance.
Endure the voiceless Glenn Miller until his brass bellows become her voice -
whispering “I love you”  to the effortless rhythm of “Moonlight Serenade.”
And imagine her,
swapping her orthopedics for black heels,
elegantly taking Pop’s hand as he helps her up from her wheelchair,
to join him for just one more dance.
Watch as they become the sepia-colored couple in every anniversary photo.
That black dress.  Those fake pearls.  
The crescendo of the band.
It’s hard to miss when it’s screaming at you.

It was October of 1966 and he was 9.
He walked proudly
through the scary Brooklyn streets,
searching for that one corner he saw-
on the ride home from PS 361,
back when he was 8.
An entire 3 blocks from home,
and he arrived at Mamma Rosa’s.
“World Famous Taste."
he would taste it soon enough.
(He didn’t know it, but Mamma’s was only famous
for the pizza grease layer over the checkered table cloths).

He mastered the menu with his 3rd grade reading skills.
The “marr-in-ay-ruh” sauce sounded tasty.

The steaming spaghetti came towards his window seat,
and Billboard’s Top 10 Singles played over his noodle noises.

“Mother’s Little Helper” by The Stones was new to him.
He twisted his pasta to the beat of the sitar.
The spicy guitar chords and zest of the marinara on his tongue. . .
The al dente string
swayed
from his stinging lips and to the beat of the bass.

He paid in three quarters he got from the landlord.
He swept the driveway every Sunday.
It was the best sauce he will have ever tasted.
“What a drag it is-
getting old.”