From moment to meaning

Holland Afternoon

Holland has a smell in the afternoon,
in Amsterdam in 2002 on Cornelius
Krusemanstraat near Valeriusplein,
a certain smell that mixes the moment
with coffee brewing in a kitchen that
looks out over a small courtyard in back
where summer finds late September still
willing to be considered a season not yet
ready to give itself over to dying things,
or to the American man who is me, visiting
on business, scenting fruit coming up from
the tiny produce store two flights down that
sells vitamins and money orders, stamps and
strange bottled drinks, thread and nail files,
children’s toys and the wintered conveniences
afforded several square blocks when cold
counts every one and the only fume that
stings the air is what cannot be long held
in the nose for to do so is to invite the way
water moves in north countries, the milled
certainty of never having to be anywhere
wind won’t go first, like a story being read
by a grandmother in a park, or a long walk
nowhere along a canal for no other reason
than to walk a canal in Holland because that
is what one does when the air steeps the scent
of dry grass and mineral, there near Valeriusplein
where the #16 stops before continuing to or
from Dam Square and the Red Light District,
where Dutch things smell of Dutch things,
unlike anything whatsoever in California,
as memory marks it for recollecting from
time to time in these passing years, when
Amsterdam moves from moment to meaning.

Joseph Gallo
September 12, 2009