..my favourite memory is how you smelt

.....my favourite memory is how you smelt,
it was how the land smelt
in the hours under the peppercorn tree,
like the taste of saltbush leaves on the tongue,
and that first pre-dawn dewfall in the desert,
the rains hanging like a promise in the air
three days before they came and the dust
moments after those first few drops fell dimpling
as it settled.
You would enter the room after weeks,
bringing into it leather and sweet sweat,
saddle-sore
sun-warmed
dust-caked and fire-smoked skin,
clothes,
and everyone had missed you.

You would fill the room with sunshine,
burst its seams with a quality of brightness
that you could not contain,
where hardly even aware of.
You smelt of horse sweat and chaff,
of saddlesoap;
I would stand beside the basin,
watch as you soaped,
always up to the elbows.
You smelt mostly like dew,
like petrichor.