Smoothing wrinkles

A poem that goes down memory lane with the lingering smell of patchouli.

Smoothing wrinkles


She sits in an old tin bathtub,
toes playfully bouncing the rubber ducky,
patchouli lingering in the steamy air.

She submerges for a moment,
feels the oils caress her wrinkles
that appeared,

somehow,

in the decades since her grandma
bustled about her, baking bread.

All in a dream, as heat seeps
into bones sixty years young
and growing younger every day.

Where did the child go,
that spent her summers picking flowers,
watching the morning glories climb
to greet the dawn with blue?

Where did the youth go,
who sighed upon the back porch swing,
then walked down the crimson sidewalk
while a cardinal darted overhead?

She sits in her steamy oils
smoothing wrinkles of a life well lived,
toes playing with her grandchild’s toy,
lost in patchouli dreams.

© Kåre Enga

2 januar 2005
Catalogue number: [161.948]

Notes: for my cousin, Judith Winchell, of San Francisco, California.