Happy Valentine’s Day Poem

American Life in Poetry: Column 516
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Kurt Brown was a talented poet who died in 2013, and his posthumous 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.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2014 by the Estate of Kurt Brown, “The Kiss,” from I’ve Come This Far to Say Hello: Poems Selected and New by Kurt Brown (Tiger Bark Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of The Estate of Kurt Brown and Tiger Bark Press. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.