A Smell of Mothballs

Behind the cabin, age and mothballs
a smell I will not forget
of a cabin, a retreat, of another time
no living proof, no visible thing
but powerful things, the smell of age,
the smell of long gone mothballs
age has a smell, more than musty,
not readily given description; but real
out in the woods, the old building oozed
reeked of age and mothballs,
just as her home did, so long ago
out in the woods where the park was
almost forty years later, still quick to recall
that same smell of mothballs

July 26, 2008
memories of Laurel Park
http://www.laurel-park.org/
and Chocorua Island Chapel,
Church Island, Squam Lake,
Holderness, NH
http://www.churchisland.org/