Maggie, when the dog comes inside,
she brings a coat full of the freshest air.
Something Nanny considered the purest scent.
Unlike what her grandmother breathed,
all five foot one and blonde and clinging
to the steel handrails of a garbage truck—
hauling trash and fighting off men
stinking of grenadine and cabbage.
Unlike the smell of solvents that Asher used
to wash the steel shells of large caliber armaments
on the shop floor of the Picatinny Arsenal
where he worked from the time he flunked sixth grade
to the day he was thrown sixty yards
through the windshield of his Karmann Ghia.
Unlike the smell of the vomit pooled
into a pancake behind the bar and by the taps
that somehow stretched to my hands,
though I couldn’t see beyond the bar rail,
padded and spongy and upholstered in cracked vinyl.
You, Maggie, are the smell of the dog’s coat,
in from lying hours in the snow and watching.
