Cold things
have little smell,
and one of the attractions
of a snowy night
is the total blank
our nose perceives.
~ Luca TurinThe Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell
But flowers distilled,
though they
with winter meet,Leese but
their show;
their substance
still lives sweet.
~ William Shakespeare
Sonnet 5
Those hours that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel.
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness everywhere.
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show;
their substance still lives sweet.~ William Shakespeare
I love juxtapositions of spritzing spring/summer
in the dark of winter,
notes held captive in glass reveal their stories of light and season.
In bright of summer, putting on a cool, sharp winter plays with the senses.
The perfumers' art amuses
and for this
I thank them, heartily, joyfully.
photo: Lurana author in 1967 or '68
part of a photoseries/art poem
for an art project to a Ferlinghetti poem
Pound Ridge Tree Reservation, Connecticut
