I burnt courgettes last night
Made a grimace to the tang
My thought instantly challenged
By a startling anthropological idea

What if my taste was not mine?

Perhaps I dislike the miasma
Of carbonised foods for my genes suggest
They would gladly kill me I should not swallow
Molecules of acrylamide releasing death.

My thoughts propel me to the arcane
Nose is fussy and abhors many other scents,
Hydrogen sulfide evocative of rotten-eggs
The fetor of black waters redolent of plagues,

Mingling with iron in my cells murdering oxygen
The mephitis of exhaust gases steals my breath,
My olfactory receptors send signals to my nerves
Glomeruli speak with mitrals who refer

To my brain, alerting potential dangers
Reeks warn that something is amiss,
Millennia of existence humans evolve
To develop a taste, not ours but encoded

In our DNA.

[Featured painting: Woman smells fragrance of flower, Hashiguchi Goyo, 1905]