What the Head, The Heart, Know Not Of

The tongue — and so the brain —
savors, say, peppermint or vanilla
and the nose assents
to Chicklets and ice cream.

Then — it could be any day —
revulsion has its way,
comes from nowhere
we can trace, and sends

waves of nausea at a whiff
of the flavors or even
of their names, who knows why.
Something snapping into place,

a wrong-headed project
of the mind and body meant to save us
from invasion by odorous conspirators,
the wind fortunately at their rear.

This could be related to those mornings
when a lover, after waking contented,
unaccountably revolts from the other
whose hair or lips or waxy ears

offend, and the heart sends out its
deadly, canceling rubber stamp.
And the nose could play its part again,
picking up perhaps a wafting stench from a

shared gorgonzola salad, an association indelible,
pheromonically stuck to the other's flesh
that might be miles away. But the imprint can
stay forever, like an image in a new-born chick,

though, mysteriously, the craving might
suddenly erupt, rapture be restored,
the ruptured senses and the brain
be reinstated exactly as before.