-- The Intimacy of a Kiss --

by John Herlihy

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A full range of emotions lies embedded in a simple kiss,

From gnawing emptiness in our lives to the fullest bliss.

An outpouring of one’s heart another heart to capture,

Face to face, lip to lip, the font of overwhelming rapture.

Such sure familiarity lies in the strangeness of a tender kiss,

The meeting of the strange and familiar with nothing amiss.

At face value, an encounter between the comic and tragic,

With one good reason, bound at the seams as if by magic

A handshake speaks of cordiality as all of us clearly know,

The ear listens to sweet nothings but where do they go.

Yet neither the hands nor ears give vent to deeper feeling,

As an act of devotion of the body to send the mind reeling.

Rubbing noses in some cultures, but where is the taste,

To some it may even seem a little silly, a kind of waste.

The hand too busy, with too little feeling, too much action,

The eyes see everything, but do nothing, with no traction.

The dry kiss of a mother, upon the cheek or the forehead,

A friend shows affection with a hug or kiss, softer instead.

At social events, people kiss like hens pecking the ground,

In my boyhood, I imagined a first kiss with no one around.

And then, one day or was it night, the moment arrived,

I looked at her, I looked inside her, wind blowing alive.

Uncertain by what I saw, but the eyes full of bright lights,

A feeling of closeness, of weight, her mouth in my sights.

The mouth, keeper of the breath, the temple of the voice,

The subtle instrument of the smile, as our hearts rejoice.

The treasurer of succulent tastes and home of the tongue,

Of warmth, of ripeness, firm with fulness, of psalms sung.

Then the lips, unlike the rest of the face, rosy with redness,

Partially open, a flash of the tongue, trembling tenderness.

Small wonder we do kiss, the mouth, the breath, the taste,

Tongues commune in a soundless language, with no haste.

Words left unsaid that have no shape, no name, no light,

Eyes closed in the blueness of day and blackness of night.

The wind putting its breath into the soft curls of her hair,

The moon spreading pale light across the misty night air.

Shared emotion unlocking an intimacy to the question why,

Like the green in fields and trees, like the blue in the sky.

Touched by a drunken giddiness that is the breath of dreams,

Wrapped in dewy freshness binding together love at the seams.

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Sunday 31 December 2023