Researchers say people with the inability to smell or taste some spices and certain fruit show signs of early onset of Alzheimer’s.
--Charlotte Observer, July 2007
Granulated sugar mixed with cinnamon sprinkled
freely on lavishly buttered piece of plain white bread---
One tiny yellow lemon, grown on grandmother’s back-
yard tree, juice enough to flood deep-fried calamari---
Slowly eaten morsels of thin-sliced banana, as if this
were the last meal before dying, before taste disappears---
Yesterday the toast, today the lemon, tomorrow bananas---
gone like recollections from this moment’s metaphors.
Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.