Let's Hear It for the Nose

The nose has been much on our minds of late. The main charter of our new detective novel (Forged Blade) has a broken nose as his most distinctive feature. Few authors choose to write about the nose, yet it is planted in the middle of our face and never stops growing our entire lives.
   The nose has more names than any other physical feature. For example: pug nose, Roman nose, Eagle nose, pig nose, Hawk nose, sharp nose, ski jump nose, patrician nose and the list goes on an on. The lady friend who stuck by Doc Holiday is known to history as Big Nose Kate.
   The nose gets a workout this time of year as 'hay fever' season is in full force with ragweed and other fall plants in bloom. Spring sends thousands of people indoors when trees and early flowers bloom. Spring nose problems are called 'rose fever' and pollen from plants drifts on wind currents from distances as much as 300 miles. We seen our cove, on Lake Cumberland turn yellow from pollen that settles on the water.
   Of all our physical senses smell is the last to fade as we age. Smell invokes memories reaching back through our lives, both pleasant and revolting.
   Our nose twitches when we smell enticing odors coming from the kitchen. We turn up our nose when we don't want any part of a situation. The tip of our nose turns red as an early warning sign of over exposure to cold. We cover our nose when confronted with the smell of offal.
   Dogs with a keen sense of smell have long been prized for hunting, drug sniffing, tracking, rescue missions, and were used to locate the submerged body of a drowning victim near our home.
   Scientifically, what we smell are minute particles of a substance floating in the air reach the olfactory sensatory cells high inside our nose to trigger electronic signals that travel along our nerves to the brain. These human nerve paths were recorded by Bell Laboratories and presented to the public in a film, "Our Five Senses," for use in schools over fifty years-ago.
   Thus, we can disdain the odor of a burning cigar, but wax eloquently about the smell of burning leaves or an open cedar wood fire, or recognize the stink of eggs we put on to boil and forgot.
   Poets use a form of poetry called a sonnet, fourteen lines with a distinctive rhyming scheme to write lovely lines. I found this one to a nose in The Wayfaring Stranger's Notebook by Burl Ives, a folklorist, balladeer, humorist, storyteller, and actor. Since he didn't give an author, I assume he wrote it himself.

                The Importance of Having a Nose       

       'Ths very odd that poets should suppose
        There is no poetry about a nose,
        When plain as is the nose upon your face,
        A noseless face would lack poetic grace.
        Noses have sympathy: a lover knows
        Noses are always touched when lip are kissing:
        And who would care to kiss where nose is missing?
        Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows
        Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling?
        I know a nose, a nose no other knows,
        'Neath starry eyes, o'er ruby lips it grows;
        Beauty is in its form and music in its blows.

   We wish to thank Barbara Appleby, who did the illustration for us several years ago. It is too good to not recycled.

Nash Black, author of Forged Blade.