POEM - Love In An Arctic Cold Front

I reach across a table to steal just one kiss
And it is as calamitous as jangling silverware,
These thoughts of love that crackle like ice underfoot.

Yearning is never frozen, rather it is warm like a wet tongue
To a metal pole in shivering, polar air;
It stays warm even when French kissing heavy metal objects.

Warm enough to reach across a table to steal just one kiss,
To jerk the shroud of the familiar around me – the contour
Of your face amid a crowd of strangers.

To wear the kind of forgiveness that begs me to jump – just jump.
To become a green tenderling to your brown broad-shouldered earth,
A fiddlehead curled asleep, coaxed to awaken, unfurl.

A finger that beckons to me of promises of anything.
“Come here and turn love into concrete,” it says.
“Come here and stave off night with the million suns

You carry about within you”. Light everywhere,
It achieves love in inches instead of miles.
It reaches across that table to steal just one kiss.