As a child, I had synæsthesia. There wasn’t a name for it then (at least not one I knew), but taste & smell & colour bled into each other in ways I have yet to untangle. My sense of smell was always acute, & remains part of much of my daily life. There is a smell to ink, to dust, to more obvious objects like tea & bread & a warm ripe peach. So today’s NaPoWriMo prompt wasn’t hard, per se. It simply required me to decide what of all I tasted today — bread pudding, Chinese black tea, beef bourguignon, mint toothpaste — would work. Utlimately? It was none of these. It was what the rain did to the new garden we’re putting in at the new house.
Here’s the prompt:
Many poems explore the sight or sound or feel of things, and Proust famously wrote about the memories evoked by smell, but today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that explores your sense of taste! This could
And here’s the poem ~
Blue Ridge rain
Rainfall on freshly planted lilac
Soaks the lavender along the wall
Saturates the mountain air
The taste of conifer & dirt
Metallic tang of lightening
Blue Ridge spring rains down
On new roses, red anemones
The tiny leaves of thyme
In the distance thunder
Life uncurls beneath red clay
Reaches skyward
Tea and Breath 