That Smell

That smell when I opened the cupboard tonight

linked me back to my past and my further past.

I am a young mother in her kitchen.

I am a child in my own mother's kitchen.

I was making myself a cup of cocoa

to take with me to my bed, to help me sleep.

The night was fading at last from hot to warm.

The cupboard released aromas: tea, coffee,

sugar, and the cocoa's chocolatey waft.

It was all subtle. You could include paper —

that fine, fresh scent of clean paper, barely there.

All of these scents together were faint and light.

But they were enough. Enough to connect me

back to selves who I used to be. The same food —

no, the same drink — unchanged through generations

of my family, and other families 

in English-speaking homes where cocoa is drunk,

throughout the world, becomes link, becomes message. 

Or where tea is drunk, or coffee. Where there is 

a cupboard, kitchen cupboard, with wooden doors.

Some household where all the habits, all the smells

combine in a continuous way of life;

and cocoa made with milk and drunk with sugar

is what you have at bedtime to help you sleep.

A message from the past, from my ancestors!

And from my past selves to the me I am now.

It is a good message. It has no content 

except itself, its existence. The message 

is the message. "Continuity," it says, 
and, "Lineage". And it seems to say, "Comfort".

April 2014 PAD Challenge, day 3: a message poem