Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tanita Here. Thank you, Tanita, for hosting.
Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Project is over and I almost managed to write a poem everyday except, I think, two. Still I am very proud I managed to write while and visit relatives most of February. So Yay! And it was wonderful reading so many different responses to daily prompts.
Today I will share another of the poems I started this month. I can’t recall the prompt, but I chose to celebrate the nose and how it aids the human race.
But I am hardly the only poet to celebrate the nose. Below are two stanzas from a poem by Jack Prelutsky, who is glad the nose is where it is on the face and not elsewhere:
BE GLAD YOUR NOSE IS ON YOUR FACE by Jack Prelutsky Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot. Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you'd be forced to smell your feet. The rest of the poem can be read HERE
My poem expresses gratitude for the nose differently:
ODE TO OLFACTION Who'd care to propose we dispense with the nose? In quiet stealth, the nose promotes health, and its arrival boosted survival when early man found smell as useful as sound, and a benefaction to detect putrefaction. which is why we retreat when we smell dodgy meat. © Janice Scully 2023
It’s interesting, I think, to consider all the things the different parts of our healthy bodies do for us and they all deserve a poem or two.
Of course we can’t sit around all day contemplating the human body, we’re too busy doing what we do! But we can still be grateful, now and again, for this collection of miracles.