A potent wizard

I follow an account on bluesky (@bookgaga.bsky.social) that regularly posts poetry. Today's selection was short and evocative for me, "Emerald Inula" by Sam Cherubin. (Full poem is here)

"i.

Apples in Schiller’s desk, Balsam of Peru, rockrose,

rose alba, Helichrysum Everlasting, Immortale.

Why can’t this be enough?

ii.

Dried petals staining the pages.

Attar of cells breathing sun.

Flesh never accepting, but aching."

I learned that inula was a plant and that the 18th century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller kept decaying apples in his desk drawer because their aroma spurred his creative juices when he was feeling stuck in his writing. 

Smell is a potent wizard, wrote Helen Keller. Indeed. Like Schiller's apples, the scent of rose congou in the afternoon can draw words to the page.  The shadowy fragrance of incense, all balsam and frankincense, that shakes out of my alb transports me to a darkened church, prostrate before mystery. The sweet sharp smell of an organic chemistry lab summons my father's ghost. What is scent enough for me to stir sentences into words, to conjure up  memory, to assuage the aches of loss? One molecule? Two?