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Coker 1990-2005


Smells Her Way

Wet nose rakes the air
for the code:
stencil-paws
the rabbit
stamped in dirt
the dog brailles;
sets up a bay so tight
the sky bruises.

She’s got a scent, says Ted,
his eyes tracking her bamboo-snake body
zigzag up the path
her nose a shovel thrusting
into ground.

In London there are three female gingko trees.

Here is the grand dame.
The tangy plums she
drops in late October
are a Chinese yellow kimono blowing open –
smell that shocks
our hands into early acts: birth,
lust and human passage.

In our minds the smell of rotting
gingko gets mixed with Coker dying –
the way she noses
onto the lower veranda

where her dense-animal smell
settles like trapped heat
that percolates the compost.
We bury the dog
in the back garden, seed potato
planted deep underground

nose-up.

(Coker, 1990 – 2005)