since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 16, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

i like
to think that on
the flower you gave me when we
loved

            the far-
departed mouth sweetly-saluted
lingers.
              if one marvel

seeing the hunger of my
lips for a dead thing,
i shall instruct
him silently with becoming

steps to seek
your face       and i
entreat,by certain foolish perfect
hours

          dead too,
if that he come receive
him as your lover sumptuously
being

kind
          because i trust him to
your grace,and for
in his own land

he is called death.

This poem is in the public domain.