Perfume And Corona

Read this beautiful poem by Tony Hoagland in which he describes a woman in love. He writes in Grammar:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

As you grow older, you don't see a lot of these women in your social circles. Almost everyone is past their falling in love days - it is an old marriage, a committed relationship of several years or maybe it is the choice to go it solo. There is no corona to find and neither is there "the perfume of fermenting joy" to be attracted to. I found myself thinking of friends from years ago when I read these lines - they had been at that time in their lives, the kind of women who could be only described the way Hoagland does.

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