From My Father’s Voice: The Aromatic Memories

Betsy Joseph

October 29, 2021

Toward the close of my long life

I found memory to be both selective and unpredictable,

to be both elusive and ineluctable.

There were moments of memory strangled

when I could not recall my own father’s middle name.

Yet there were also fragments of another kind 

which would arrive, most welcome, often at early dawn:

memories of aromas both subtle and robust

floating from the oven or stovetop 

throughout the rooms of our house,

always accompanied by a wife’s deep love for cooking.

For fifty-plus years my wife’s kitchen 

produced standard pleasures of meatloaf and pot roast

as well as dishes with a charming lilt like Coq au Vin 

and those with hard consonants like Hungarian Goulash,

strong on paprika— and all of them delicious. 

As my memory continued to dim

(imagine a backyard in deepening twilight),

I still savored those aromatic memories—

yes, growing more rare, though certainly no less sweet

when they did appear.

Poems by Betsy Joseph (Dallas, TX) have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Only So Many Autumns, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2019. Recently she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, published their book Benches, which pairs her haiku with his black and white photography.