The Smell of Music

How will mash sailors make it to the couch
if you their bright lighthouse stop talking?
How will the blue cowboys smell the guitar
if you stop picking up where you left off?

You must finish what you begin even
if you bring it to an end like the swells
not cresting breaking happily into mush
waves at high tide too deep to wade.

Things are happy then sad then happy
again, like flowers, like the blue bells
swells rising up and over and falling
into laughter and rolling in silliness.

Waves like bells deep and sonorous
sounds you can smell like seaweed
drying on barnacled covered rocks
that’s the half purpose of poetry:

That you smell what others hear
that you hear what others taste
that you taste what others feel
that you feel what others seal.

When sense and sound blend
with your surroundings sitting
on the couch and you get up
to adjust a lighthouse throw.

I’ve opened comments I hope
you leave one and I’ve included
a photo which might be easier
to comment on than the poem.

Photo: Cobble Beach, below Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Oregon Coast, 2019, on the way home from trip to Healdsburg.