Kissing Meditation
        —after Adam Phillips

If kissing is the mouth's elegy
to itself, let me always mourn:

at dawn, when sleep frosts lips;
at noon, mouths indiscreet

as unlocked rooms, or at dusk,
lips two fading fires

quenched by each other.
Best, perhaps, midnight's kiss,

redolent with dream-craft,
or those drunken tongues

sloppy in their tangos.
There's bitter plum

of last kiss, unknown until
it's past, half kiss and sly kiss,

clumsy firsts and toothy
near-misses, forgotten ones

floating back unexpectedly
like snapped water lilies—

mouths cannot be tamed
and thankfully so.

No kiss completes.
Multiple as self,

they abate narrative.
Lawless, we unfold.

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Copyright © 2019 Amie Whittemore All rights reserved
from Birmingham Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission