The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote: “If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is, or what “God’s fragrance” means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close. Like this.”
This is possibly my favorite poem of all time. It restores me like the smoke/rain/gingerbread/greenhouse my scent sense is fed by. It is a poem about simplicity, about human-scaled miracles. About trust. About home. In my fantasy there is a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland — after the drink saying Drink Me, after the cake pleading Eat Me — where the adventuring, alien Alice, way down the rabbit hole, far from the familiar and maybe somewhat homesick — comes upon a modest glass with a ginger stem reaching down into a pale golden scent that humbly suggests: Like This…