Leaning in for the kiss
Such a primal element of life
The old man sharing long love with a 70-year partner
Gentle and sweet in its glow
A Prince and Sleeping Beauty
Lips touching in awe and hope
To bring her back from the drought
Of waiting slumber
Lips hard pressed and wet
With furtive tongues exploring
Communicating in a dance of passion
Imbuing new love with desperation
Invigorating enduring love
With renewed power
Leaning in for the kiss
Can be a slight movement
Or a crash, aimed and tilted
A stroke from two directions
Driving to be one
A kiss hello to cheek or forehead
A greeting kind and filled with grace
A momentary gift of care
Given with expectations for in-kind
By relatives and friends
A keening tactile contact point
Of passion’s power as naked forms
Connect through sweat and sensation
The kiss an emphatic exclamation point
Of caress and climax
A lean in to say farewell
With all sense of loss and longing
Pressed in the softness of lips
Attempting to be both
Gentle and profound
It ends the night
It lingers over loss
It caresses warm hearts
It touches cool and painted flesh
Still in the leaving
Gone in the grieving
In most of our now lives
The lean in
The kiss
are gone
Vaporized in virus fear
Curtailed in a corona of panic
No bridge to cross the six-foot gulf
Even in our now most painful goodbyes
The lean in kiss is thwarted by screens
Or glass
Love just beyond reach
Which makes the holding of it
So much more to bear – within and without