Arrayed in Glory

“You hold them as if they’re diamonds,”
my husband says to me as I place
another decant in its spot in the tray.
It makes me wonder. Do I?

I know I get excited when I
hear a delivery truck stop
outside.
I know I’m thrilled to hear
the plunk of a box at my door.
I pick it up and if it says, usually: Lucky Scent or
other purveyor, or a perfume house—
I know I smile.
When I open it, I know my heart beats
the way Columbus’s must have when,
having crossed an ocean, he first glimpsed land.
Will it be wild or civilized?
Friendly? Beautiful beyond words?
I know I try to sense the designer’s
heart and hopes for it.

As for perfume shops and counters,
usually I go alone, like any worshiper,
to commune with what I adore.

I can’t explain how I got like this,
but here I am, surrounded by blue
plastic boxes, anticipating radiant hours
sniffing woods and fruit, herbs and spice and resins and flowers
sourced the world over,
sniffing by house, designer, note or genre
from blue boxes of hundreds of decants,
organized at last and
arrayed in glory
on the floor.