The Kiss
for David
Not the mosaic couple made famous by Klimt,
bodies cleaved close, so thin they could be
construed as one person.
Not the floating lovers Chagall lifted,
praised with brush strokes of color.
But us, seconds before
you were transported to surgery,
our kiss witnessed by a few
who dared not look away.
They still carry the moment like a postcard
purchased at the Louvre, a souvenir
against forgetting what might
or might not be, the last—our portrait
rendered without an artist, love
sculpted more naked than Rodin's nudes.
How my feet could not feel the ground.
How your heart refused letting go
all that between us shimmered.
by Donna Doyle
from JAMA, June 22/29, 2011