Petrichor
Aug 21 2014


The smell after it rains.
A sun shower
that breaks a long hot

dry spell.

Like parched lips, wetted

with a damp cloth.

Steam, wisping off the asphalt.
With that pungent scent
of loam, and tar
and ionized air.

I'm a kid again.
All summer, outside,
the screen door slapping shut
sprinklers lazily circling.
Before traffic-stuck, climate-controlled,

from sealed office

to hermetic home.

When the movie palace
was a cool dark oasis,
smelling of popcorn , and stale smoke.

And something on the sticky floor,

velour seats

in the back row.

Then blinking back tears

in the blinding light

outside.

The sense of smell wanes, with age.
Perhaps the olfactory organ
wears out,
like hard-of-hearing
and dimming eyes.

Or did I stop paying attention
start moving fast?
When a summer rain
caught me blind-side,
took me instantly back.


I read a piece in The Atlantic Wire called "Why the World Smells Different After it Rains." Who knew there was actually a word for this, and that serious scientists have studied it? According to the article:

"Petrichor" is the wonderful word that describes the wonderful scent of the air after a rain shower. It comes, like so many wonderful words do, from the ancient Greek: a combination of ichor, the "ethereal essence" the Greeks believed flowed through the veins of their gods, and petros, the stones that form the surface of the Earth.

PBS's Joe Hanson describes the biology that leads to petrichor. "When decomposed organic material is blown airborne from dry soil," he explains, "it lands on dirt and rock where it's joined by minerals. And the whole mixture is cooked in this magical medley of molecules. Falling raindrops then send those chemicals airborne, right into your nostalgic nostrils."

So this poem is a shameless and manipulative wallow in nostalgia: a cheap and lazy trick to elicit pathos, and for which I should by all rights apologize. But won't!

I've tried to use strong visceral sensations in the poem; not only of smell, but hearing and sight as well. With which I could, of course, have go on and on. So in picking my poison, how could I possibly have resisted the delightful irony and anachronistic hyperbole of "movie palace"?

We all know how powerful olfaction is in evoking emotion and memory. And we all instantly recognize this scent. But it seems to me it's been far too long since I last had a whiff of that wonderful smell, breathing all the way in through my nose. ...And in again.