You Could Use a Kiss

You are standing on the beach, at the nadir of low tide.
The water and the crabs have left their tracks,
a bit of abstract art they can not leave alone,
always changing with the seas, yet somehow eternal.

You are standing on the beach, at the nadir of low tide,
contemplating, more like a mystic than a man,
what is next. What is ahead. What has been release
and what I cling to. What is important.

It doesn’t look that way. To the bystander you are staring in space
like a refugee from last night’s drunk. A little dazed.
A little amazed that you wound up here
at this point in time, not resting like wise old men,

But starting over.

You could use a kiss. A kiss from the woman you love.
as you look over the sand you remember your first kiss
with her. Strangely comfortable and powerful.
Kisses are highly underated. The place we come together

and share the power of our love. Somehow, for you at least,
never losing their potency over the years. THere is magic in them
and that is what you are seeking, new magic for a new start,
something more than yourself.

Not that you are not enough. No. You don’t fall into that trap any longer.
You are enough, but it is enough itself that is not enough.
All your life you wanted to be more
and something in you cannot release that need,

A modern day Ulysses shred of the nobility,
a wanderer in time and space in search of nothing more
than his truest love,
and the one perfect kiss.

About this poem

A lot in this one. Spawned by a re-reading of one of my favorite poems, Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Spawned by the fact that I am taking on a second and new church at 69. Spawned by the belief that kisses are entirely underrated in the lexicon of love. Spawned by memories of the first kiss with the woman I love.

That’s a lot of influences for one poem. But in the end it is a love poem.

The picture was taken at Chatham, Mass, on Cape Cod.

Tom