Star Jasmine Poem by Margie Cronin

Some smells are like a question
to which you know there is no answer.
The brilliant burning oil of the star jasmine
caught like a miniature swimmer
in the blue glass bowl of the sky today
is asking all the other flowers why
they have dropped their petals
in my poems. We will settle with the book,
I say, and see if these words can shake
themselves loose as musical notes; can pattern
themselves as the mathematics of love.
But the star jasmine will not sit,
joins the nervous creeper on the fence's
doodle-edge and freezes the drunk cat
with its stark white scent.
It is the most jealous of all the blooms
I have captured in language and delights
in giving frights to the little white ghosts
of the savoury and pulling the lamb's ears
until all their rosy purple flowers fall
into the margins of my page.
Should I untype it? Take its vanity
by the delicate line and shake it?
Alas, these questions smell sui generis.
My nose is, quite simply, in love.