great expectations.

A storm is blowing in.
I can smell it through my open windows:
copper, honey, the pasty sealing of an envelope,
sheets taken down from the laundry line,
the yellowed pages of an old and weathered book,
vanilla, freshly cut wood, electricity;
all of these spices married into a brew,
sprayed out of an invisible perfume bottle
and carried like dust on the wind.
It was the fragrance Benjamin Franklin
inhaled as he was tying a skeleton key to his paper kite,
the aroma of expectation.
“Remember the ferryboat that used to sail by
that lit up like a floating birthday cake?”
No, but tomorrow, I will make my way
down to the river, crowned in a chain of daises and clover,
with a crow’s feather in my back pocket
and see what the storm swept ashore.