American Life in Poetry

Ted Kooser U.S. poet laureate, 2004-06

Kurt Brown was a talented poet who died in 2013, and his posthumous collection of selected and new poems opens with this touching late poem to his wife, Laure-Anne.

The Kiss

That kiss I failed to give you.

How can you forgive me?

The kiss I would have spent on you is still

There, within me. It will probably die there.

But it will be the last of me to die.

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